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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHILD UNDER EIGHT ***
By
E.R. Murray
AND
THOMAS TRAHERNE.
1920
_The following volumes are now ready, and others are in preparation_:--
EDITOR'S PREFACE
The Editor and his colleagues have had in view the needs of young
teachers and of those training to be teachers, but since the school and
the schoolmaster are not the sole factors in the educative process, it
is hoped that educators in general (and which of us is not in some sense
or other an educator?) as well as the professional schoolmaster may find
in the series some help in understanding precept and practice in
education of to-day and to-morrow. For we have borne in mind not only
what is but what ought to be. To exhibit the educator's work as a
vocation requiring the best possible preparation is the spirit in which
these volumes have been written.
No artificial uniformity has been sought or imposed, and while the
Editor is responsible for the series in general, the responsibility for
the opinions expressed in each volume rests solely with its author.
ALBERT A. COOK.
AUTHORS' PREFACE
We have made this book between us, but we have not collaborated. We know
that we agree in all essentials, though our experience has differed. We
both desire to see the best conditions for development provided for all
children, irrespective of class. We both look forward to the time when
the conditions of the Public Elementary School, from the Nursery School
up, will be such--in point of numbers, in freedom from pressure, in
situation of building, in space both within and without, and in beauty
of surroundings--that parents of any class will gladly let their
children attend it.
We are teachers and we have dealt mainly with the mental or, as we
prefer to call it, the spiritual requirements of children. It is from
the medical profession that we must all accept facts about food values,
hours of sleep, etc., and the importance of cleanliness and fresh air
are now fully recognised. We do, however, feel that there is room for
fresh discussion of ultimate aims and of daily procedure. Mr. Clutton
Brock has said that the great weakness of English education is the want
of a definite aim to put before our children, the want of a philosophy
for ourselves. Without some understanding of life and its purpose or
meaning, the teacher is at the mercy of every fad and is apt to exalt
method above principle. This book is an attempt to gather together
certain recognised principles, and to show in the light of actual
experience how these may be applied to existing circumstances.
The day is coming when all teachers will seek to understand the true
value of Play, of spontaneous activity in all directions. Its importance
is emphasised in nearly all the educational writings of the day, as well
in the Senior as in the Junior departments of the school, but we need a
full and deep understanding of the saying, "Man is Man only when he
plays." It is easy to say we believe it, but it needs strong faith,
courage, and wide intelligence to weave such belief into the warp of
daily life in school.
E.R. MURRAY.
H. BROWN SMITH.
CONTENTS
PART I
THE CHILD IN THE NURSERY AND KINDERGARTEN
BY E. R. MURRAY
CHAP.
I. "WHAT'S IN A NAME?"
II. THE BIOLOGIST EDUCATOR
III. LEARNING BORN OF PLAY
IV. FROM 1816 TO 1919
V. "THE WORLD'S MINE OYSTER"
VI. "ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE"
VII. JOY IN MAKING
VIII. STORIES
IX. IN GRASSY PLACES
X. A WAY TO GOD
XI. RHYTHM
XII. FROM FANCY TO FACT
XIII. NEW NEEDS AND NEW HELPS
PART II
BY H. BROWN SMITH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
PART I
CHAPTER I
"WHAT'S IN A NAME?"
In England the word Nursery, which implies the idea of nurture, belongs
properly to children, though it has been borrowed by the gardener for
his young plants. In Germany it was the other way round; Froebel had to
invent the term _child garden_ to express his idea of the nurture, as
opposed to the repression, of the essential nature of the child.
Unfortunately the word Kindergarten while being naturalised in England
had two distinct meanings attached to it. Well-to-do people began to
send their children to a new institution, a child garden or play school.
The children of the people, however, already attended Infant Schools,
of which the chief feature was what Mr. Caldwell Cook calls
"sit-stillery," and here the word Kindergarten, really equivalent to
Nursery School, became identified with certain occupations, childlike in
origin it is true, but formalised out of all recognition. How a real
Kindergarten strikes a child is illustrated by the recent remark from a
little new boy who had been with us for perhaps three mornings. "Shall I
go up to the nursery now?" he asked.
It was from "stony Berlin," as Froebel calls it, that the edict went
forth in the name of the Minister of Education entirely prohibiting
Kindergartens in Prussia, and the prohibition soon spread. At the
present time it seems to us quite fitting that the bitter attack upon
Kindergartens should have been launched by Folsung, a schoolmaster, "who
began life as an artilleryman." Nor is it less interesting to read that
it was under the protection of Von Moltke himself that Oberlin schools
were opened to counteract the attractions of the "godless" Kindergarten.
Little wonder that the same man who in 1813 had so gladly taken up arms
to resist the invasion of Napoleon, and who had rejoiced with such
enthusiasm in the prospect of a free and united Fatherland, should write
in 1851:
And to America he might have gone had he lived, but he died three months
later, his end hastened by grief at the edict which closed the
Kindergartens. The Prussian Minister announced, in this edict, that "it
is evident that Kindergartens form a part of the Froebelian socialistic
system, the aim of which is to teach the children atheism," and the
suggestion that he was anti-Christian cut the old man to the heart.
There had been some confusion between Froebel and one of his nephews,
who had democratic leanings, and no doubt anything at all democratic did
mean atheism to "stony Berlin" and its intolerant autocracy.
Froebel was by no means of the opinion that, if only the teacher had the
right spirit, the name did not matter. Rather did he hold with
Confucius, whose answer to the question of a disciple, "How shall I
convert the world?" was, "Call things by their right names." He refused
to use the word school, because "little children, especially those under
six, do not need to be schooled and taught, what they need is
opportunity for development." He had great difficulty in selecting a
name. Those originally suggested were somewhat cumbrous, e.g.
_Institution for the Promotion of Spontaneous Activity in Children_;
another was _Self-Teaching Institution_, and there was also the one
which Madame Michaelis translated "_Nursery School for Little
Children_."
To one of his students he writes: "You remember well enough how hard we
worked and how we had to fight that we might elevate the Darmstadt
cr�che, or rather Infant School, by improved methods and organisation
until it became a true Kindergarten.... Now what was the outcome of all
this, even during my own stay at Darmstadt? Why, the fetters which
always cripple a cr�che or an Infant School, and which seem to cling
round its very name--these fetters were allowed to remain unbroken.
Every one was pleased with so faithful a mistress as yourself,... yet
they withheld from you the main condition of unimpeded development, that
of the freedom necessary to every young healthy and vigorous plant....
Is there really such importance underlying the mere name of a
system?--some one might ask. Yes, there is.... It is true that any one
watching your teaching would observe _a new spirit_ infused into it,
_expressing and fulfilling the child's own wants and desires._ You would
strike him as personally capable, but you would fail to strike him as
priestess of the idea which God has now called to life within man's
bosom, and of the struggle towards the realisation of that
idea--_education by development--the destined means of raising the whole
human race...._ No man can acquire fresh knowledge, even at a school,
beyond the measure which his own stage of development fits him to
receive.... Infant Schools are nothing but a contradiction of
child-nature. Little children especially those under school age, ought
not to be schooled and taught, what they need is opportunity for
development. This idea lies in the very name of a Kindergarten.... And
the name is absolutely necessary to describe the first education of
children."
For an actual definition of what Froebel meant by his Nursery School for
Little Children or Kindergarten, it is only fair to go to the founder
himself. He has left us two definitions or descriptions, one announced
shortly before the first Kindergarten was opened, which runs:
"An institution for the fostering of human life, through the cultivation
of the human instincts of activity, of investigation and of construction
in the child, as a member of the family, of the nation and of humanity;
an institution for the self-instruction, self-education and
self-cultivation of mankind, as well as for all-sided development of the
individual through play, through creative self-activity and spontaneous
self-instruction."
"We also need establishments for training quite young children in their
first stage of educational development, where their training and
instruction shall be based upon their own free action or spontaneity
acting under proper rules, these rules not being arbitrarily decreed,
but such as must arise by logical necessity from the child's mental and
bodily nature, regarding him as a member of the great human family; such
rules as are, in fact, discovered by the actual observation of children
when associated together in companies. These establishments bear the
name of Kindergartens."
"The garden was not a garden, however, but a barn, with a small room and
an entrance hall. In the entrance Middendorf welcomed the children and
played a round game with them, ending with the flight of the little ones
into the room, where each of them sat down in his place on the bench and
took his box of building blocks. For half an hour they were all busy
with their blocks, and then came 'Come, children, let us play "spring
and spring."' And when the game was finished they went away full of joy
and life, every one giving his little hand for a grateful good-bye."
Froebel died too soon to see his ideals realised, but he had sown the
seed in the heart of at least one woman with brain to grasp and will to
execute. As early as 1873 the Froebelians had established something more
than the equivalent of the Montessori Children's Houses under the name
of Free Kindergartens or People's Kindergartens. It will bring this out
more clearly if, without referring here to any modern experiments in
America, in England and Scotland, or in the Dominions, we quote the
description of an actual People's Kindergarten or Nursery School as it
was established nearly fifty years ago.
"(2) The Transition Class, only held in the morning for children about 6
or 6-1/2 years old.
"Dinners are provided for those children whose parents work all day away
from home at a trifling charge of a halfpenny and a penny. Also, for a
trifle, poor children may receive assistance of various kinds in
illness, or may have milk or baths through the kindness of the kindred
'Association for the Promotion of Health in the Household.'
Besides these the child has the essentially human need for social
intercourse, for speech, for games, for songs and stories, for pictures
and poetry. He must have opportunity both to imitate and to share in the
work and life around him; he must be an individual among other
individuals, a necessary part of a whole, allowed to give as well as to
receive service. In the National Kindergarten of 1873 no one of these
requirements is overlooked except the provision for sleep, and from old
photographs we know that this, too, was considered.
Nursery Schools are needed for children of all classes. It is not only
the children of the poor who require sympathy and guidance from those
specially qualified by real grasp of the facts of child-development.
Well-to-do mothers, too, often leave their children to ignorant and
untrained servants, or to the equally untrained and hardly less ignorant
nursery governess.
Mothers in small houses have much to do; making beds and washing dishes,
sweeping and dusting, baking and cooking, making and mending, not to
mention tending an infant or tending the sick, leave little leisure for
sympathy with the adventuring and investigating propensities natural
and desirable in a healthy child between three and five. There are
innumerable Kindergartens open only in the morning for the children of
those who can afford to pay, and these could well be multiplied and
assisted just as far as is necessary. In towns, at least, mothers with
but small incomes would gladly pay a moderate fee to have their little
ones, especially their sturdy little boys, guarded from danger and
trained to good habits, yet allowed freedom for happy activity.
Kindergartens and Nursery Schools ought to be as much as possible
fresh-air schools. They should never be large or the home atmosphere
must disappear. They should always have grassy spaces and common
flowers, and they ought to be within easy reach of the children's homes.
There must for the present be certain differences between the Free
Kindergarten or Nursery School for the poor and for those whose parents
are fairly well-to-do. In both cases we must supply what the children
need. If the mother must go out to work, the child requires a home for
the day, and the Nursery School must make arrangements for feeding the
children. All little children are the better for rest and if possible
for sleep during the day; but for those who live in overcrowded rooms,
where quiet and restful sleep in good air is impossible, the need for
daily sleep is very great. All Free Kindergartens arrange for this.
CHAPTER II
"A large bright room, ... a sandheap in one corner, a low tub or bath of
water in another, a rope ladder, a swing, steps to run up and down and
such like, a line of black or green board low down round the wall,
little rough carts and trolleys, boxes which can be turned into houses,
or shops, or pretence ships, etc., a cooking stove of a very simple
nature, dolls of all kinds, wooden animals, growing plants in boxes, an
aquarium."
The description is taken from a very able address on "Child Nature and
Education" delivered some years ago by Miss Hoskyns Abrahall. It is
quoted here, because, for her conception of right surroundings for young
children, the speaker has gone to the very source from which Froebel
took his ideas--she has gone to what Froebel indeed called "the only
true source, life itself," and she writes from the point of view of the
biologist.
Before everything else, however, comes the fact that in no place has Dr.
Montessori shown that she has made any study of play, or that she
attaches special importance to the play activities, or natural
activities of childhood, on which the Kindergarten is founded. This is
probably accounted for in that her first observations were made on
deficient children who are notably wanting in initiative.
The work of Dr. Montessori has helped enormously in the movement, begun
long since, for greater freedom in our Infant Schools; freedom, not from
judicious guidance and authority, but from rigid time-tables and formal
lessons, and from arbitrary restrictions, as well as freedom for the
individual as apart from the class. The best Kindergartens and Infant
Schools had already discarded time-tables, and Kindergarten classes have
always been small enough to give the individual a fair chance. Froebel
himself constantly urged that the child should become familiar with "both
the strongly opposed elements of his life, the individual determining
and directing side, and the general ordered and subordinated side." He
urged the early development of the social consciousness as well as
insisting on expansion of individuality, but it is always difficult to
combine the two, and most Kindergarten teachers will benefit by learning
from Dr. Montessori to apply the method of individual learning to a
greater extent.
In the address, from which the opening words of this chapter are quoted,
it is suggested that a capable biologist be set to deal with education,
but he is to be freed "from all preconceived ideas derived from accepted
tradition." After such fundamentals as food and warmth, light, air and
sleep, the first problems considered by this Biologist Educator are
stages of growth, their appropriate activities, and the stimuli
necessary to evoke them. Always he bears in mind that "interference with
a growing creature is a hazardous business," and takes as his motto
"When in doubt, refrain."
To discover the natural activities of the child, the biologist relies
upon, first, observation of the child himself, secondly, upon his
knowledge of the nervous system, and thirdly, upon his knowledge of the
past history of the race. From these he comes to a very pertinent
conclusion, viz. "The general outcome of this is that the safe way of
educating children is by means of Play," play being defined as "the
natural manifestation of the child's activities; systematic in that it
follows the lines of physiological development, but without the hard
and fast routine of the time-table."[7]
At the back of all Froebel has to say about "The Education of the Human
Being" lies his conception of what the human being is. And it is
impossible fully to understand why Froebel laid so much stress on
spontaneous play unless we go deeper than the province of the biologist
without in the least minimising the importance of biological knowledge
to educational theory. As the biologist defines play as "the natural
manifestation of the child's activities," so Froedel says "play at first
is just natural life." But to him the true inwardness of spontaneous
play lies in the fact that it is spontaneous--so far as anything in the
universe can be spontaneous. For spontaneous response to environment is
self-expression, and out of self-expression comes selfhood,
consciousness of self. If we are to understand Froebel at all, we must
begin with the answer he found, or accepted, from Krause and others for
his first question, What is that self?
In the universe we can perceive plan, purpose or law, and behind this
there must be some great Mind, "a living, all-pervading, energising,
self-conscious and hence eternal Unity" whom we call God. Nature and all
existing things are a revelation of God.
As Bergson speaks of the _�lan vital_ which expresses itself from
infinity to infinity, so Froebel says that behind everything there is
force, and that we cannot conceive of force without matter on which it
can exercise itself. Neither can we think of matter without any force to
work upon it, so that "force and matter mutually condition one another,"
we cannot think one without the other.
This force expresses itself in all ways, the whole universe is the
expression of the Divine, but "man is the highest and most perfect
earthly being in whom the primordial force is spiritualised so that man
feels, understands and knows his own power." Conscious development of
one's own power is the triumph of spirit over matter, therefore human
development is spiritual development. So while man is the most perfect
earthly being, yet, with regard to spiritual development he has returned
to a first stage and "must raise himself through ascending degrees of
consciousness" to heights as yet unknown, "for who has measured the
limits of God-born mankind?"
Free from this, the child will follow his natural impulses, which are to
be trusted as much as those of any other young animal; in other words,
he will play, he will manifest his natural activities. "The young human
being--still, as it were, in process of creation--would seek, though
unconsciously yet decidedly and surely, as a product of nature that
which is in itself best, and in a form adapted to his condition, his
disposition, his powers and his means. Thus the duckling hastens to the
pond and into the water, while the chicken scratches the ground and the
young swallow catches its food upon the wing. We grant space and time to
young plants and animals because we know that, in accordance with the
laws that live in them, they will develop properly and grow well;
arbitrary interference with their growth is avoided because it would
hinder their development; but the young human being is looked upon as a
piece of wax, a lump of clay, which man can mould into what he pleases.
O man, who roamest through garden and field, through meadow and grove,
why dost thou close thy mind to the silent teaching of nature? Behold
the weed; grown among hindrances and constraint, how it scarcely yields
an indication of inner law; behold it in nature, in field or garden, how
perfectly it conforms to law--a beautiful sun, a radiant star, it has
burst from the earth! Thus, O parents, could your children, on whom you
force in tender years forms and aims against their nature, and who,
therefore, walk with you in morbid and unnatural deformity--thus could
your children, too, unfold in beauty and develop in harmony."
At first play is activity for the sake of activity, not for the sake of
results, "of which the child has as yet no idea." Very soon, however,
having man's special capacity of learning through experience, the child
does gather ideas. By this time he has passed through the stage of
infancy, and now his play becomes to the philosopher the highest stage
of human development at this stage, because now it is self-expression.
When Froebel wrote in 1826, there had been but little thought expended
on the subject of play, and probably none on human instincts, which were
supposed to be nonexistent. The hope he expressed that some philosopher
would take up these subjects has now been fulfilled, and we ought now to
turn to what has been said on a subject all-important to those who
desire to help in the education of young children.
CHAPTER III
There may be nothing new under the sun, but it does seem to be a fair
claim to make for Froebel that no one before or since his time has more
fully realised the value to humanity of what in childhood goes by the
name of play. Froebel had distinct theories about play, and he put his
theories into actual practice, not only when he founded the
Kindergarten, but in his original school for older children at Keilhau.
Before going into its full meaning, it may be well first to meet the
most common misconception about play. It is not surprising that those
who have given the subject no special consideration should regard play
from the ordinary adult standpoint, and think of it as entirely opposed
to work, as relaxation of effort. But the play of a child covers so much
that it is startling to find a real psychologist writing that "education
through play" is "a pernicious proposition."[10] Statements of this kind
spring from the mistaken idea, certainly not derived from observation,
that play involves no effort, that it runs in the line of least
resistance, and that education through play means therefore education
without effort, without training in self-control, education without
moral training. The case for the Kindergarten is the opposite of this.
Education through play is advocated just because of the effort it calls
forth, just because of the way in which the child, and later the boy or
girl, throws his whole energy into it. What Froebel admired, what he
called "the most beautiful expression of childlife," was "the child that
plays thoroughly, with spontaneous determination, perseveringly, until
physical fatigue forbids--a child wholly absorbed in his play--a child
that has fallen asleep while so absorbed." That child, he said, would be
"a thorough determined man, capable of self-sacrifice for the promotion
of the welfare of himself and others." It is because "play is not
trivial, but highly serious and of deep significance," that he appeals
to mothers to cultivate and foster it, and to fathers to protect and
guard it.
In the play of early childhood there may be freedom, not only from adult
authority, but even from the restrictions of nature or of circumstances
since "let's pretend" annihilates time and space and all material
considerations.
A full account of play will probably embrace all these theories, and
though they were not formulated in his day, Froebel overlooked none,
though he may have laid special stress on the preparation side. Yet
another value of play emphasised by Professor Royce, viz. its enormous
importance from the point of view of mental initiative, is strongly
urged by Froebel. Professor Royce argues that "in the mere persistence
of the playful child one has a factor whose value for mental initiative
it is hard to overestimate." Without this "passionately persistent
repetition," and without also the constant varying of apparently useless
activities, the organism, says Professor Royce, "would remain the prey
of the environment."
Professor Royce says that "a general view of the place which beings with
minds occupy in the physical world strongly suggests that their
organisms may especially have significance as places for the initiation
of more or less novel types of activity." And to Froebel the chief
significance of play lies in this spontaneity.
[Footnote 11: An up-to-date riddle asks the difference between the quick
and the dead, and answers, "The quick are those who get out of the way
of a motor-bus and the dead are those who do not."]
Froebel recognised many kinds of play. He realised that much of the play
of boyhood is exercise of physical power, and that it must be of a
competitive nature because the boy wants to measure his power. Even in
1826 he urges the importance not only of town playgrounds but of play
leaders, that the play may be full of life. Among games for boys he
noted some still involving sense-play, as hiding games, colour games and
shooting at a mark, which need quick hearing and sight, intellectual
plays exercising thought and judgement, _e.g._ draughts and dramatic
games. One form of play which seemed to him most important was
constructive play, where there is expression of ideas as well as
expression of power. This side of play covers a great deal, and will be
dealt with later; its importance in Froebel's eyes lies in the fact that
through construction, however simple, the child gains knowledge of his
own power and learns "to master himself." Froebel wanted particularly to
deepen this feeling of power, and says that the little one who has
already made some experiments takes pleasure in the use of sand and
clay, "impelled by the previously acquired sense of power he seeks to
master the material."
"In the family the child sees parents and others at work, producing,
doing something; consequently he, at this stage, would like to represent
what he sees. Be cautious, parents. You can at one blow destroy, at
least for a long time, the impulse to activity and to formation if you
repel their help as childish, useless or even as a hindrance....
Strengthen and develop this instinct; give to your child the highest he
now needs, let him add his power to your work, that he may gain the
consciousness of his power and also learn to appreciate its
limitations."
As ideas widen the child's purposes enlarge, and he finds the need for
that co-operation which binds human beings together. And so by play
enjoyed in common, the feeling of community which is present in the
little child is raised to recognition of the rights of others; not only
is a sense of justice developed, but also forbearance, consideration and
sympathy.
The educative value of such play has been brought forward in modern
times in _Floor Games_ by Mr. Wells, _Magic Cities_ by Mrs. Nesbit, and
notably in Mr. Caldwell Cook's Play City in _The Play Way_.
Joining together for a common purpose does not only belong to younger
boys. "What busy tumult among those older boys at the brook! They have
built canals, sluices, bridges, etc.... at each step one trespasses on
the limits of another realm. Each one claims his right as lord and
maker, while he recognises the claims of others, and like States, they
bind themselves by strict treaties."
"Every town should have its own common playground for the boys. Glorious
results would come from this for the entire community. For, at this
period, games, whenever possible, are in common, and develop the feeling
and desire for community, and the laws and requirements of community.
The boy tries to see himself in his companions, to weigh and measure
himself by them, to know and find himself by their help."
"It is the sense of sure and reliable power, the sense of its increase,
both as an individual and as a member of the group, that fills the boy
with joy during these games.... Justice, self-control, loyalty,
impartiality, who could fail to catch their fragrance and that of still
more delicate blossoms, forbearance, consideration, sympathy and
encouragement for the weaker.... Thus the games educate the boy for
life and awaken and cultivate many social and moral virtues."
In England we have always had respect for boys' games and more and more,
especially in America, people are realising the need for play places and
play leaders. But all this was written in 1826, when for ten years
Froebel had been experimenting with boys of all ages. At Keilhau play of
all kinds had an honoured place. We read of excursions for all kinds of
purposes, of Indian games out of Fenimore Cooper, and of "Homeric
battles." It was "part of Froebel's plan to have us work with spade and
pick-axe," and every boy had his own piece of ground where he might do
what he pleased. Ebers, being literary, constructed in his plot a bed of
heather on which he lay and read or made verses. The boys built their
own stage, painted their own scenery, and in winter once a week they
acted classic dramas. Besides this, there was a large and complete
puppet theatre belonging to the school. Bookbinding and carpentry were
taught, and at Christmas "the embryo cabinet-maker made boxes with locks
and hinges, finished, veneered and polished."
In England in 1917 we have given to us _The Play Way_, in which one who
has tried it gives the results of his own experiments in education
through play. Mr. Caldwell Cook was not satisfied with the condition of
affairs when "school above the Kindergarten is a nuisance because there
is no play." His dream is that of a Play School Commonwealth, where
education, which is the training of youth, shall be filled with the
spirit of youth, namely, "freshness, zeal, happiness, enthusiasm."
The next chapter will show that it has taken us exactly a hundred years
to reach as far as public recognition of the Nursery School where play
is the only possible motive. It is for the coming generation of teachers
to act so that the dream of the Play School Commonwealth shall be
realised more quickly. It is a significant fact that the lines quoted as
heading for the next chapter are written by a modern schoolmaster.
CHAPTER IV
Had England but honoured her own prophets, we should have had Nursery
Schools a hundred years ago. In 1816, the year in which Froebel founded
his school for older boys at Keilhau, Robert Owen, the Socialist,
"following the plan prescribed by Nature," opened a school where
children, from two to six, were to dance and sing, to be out-of-doors as
much as possible, to learn "when their curiosity induced them to ask
questions," and not to be "annoyed with books." They were to be
prevented from acquiring bad habits, to be taught what they could
understand, and their dispositions were to be trained "to mutual
kindness and a sincere desire to contribute all in their power to
benefit each other." They "were trained and educated without punishment
or the fear of it.... A child who acted improperly was not considered an
object of blame but of pity, and no unnecessary restraint was imposed on
the children."
But the world was not ready. Owen's "Rational Infant School" attracted
much notice, and an Infant School Society was founded. But even the
enlightened were incapable of understanding that any education was
possible without books, and the promoters rightly, though quite
unconsciously, condemned themselves when they kept the title Infant
School but dropped the qualifying "Rational." Still, Infant Schools had
been started and interest had been aroused. When the edict abolishing
Kindergartens was promulgated in Germany, some of Froebel's disciples
passed to other lands, and Madame von Marenholz came to England in 1854.
Already one Kindergarten had been opened by a Madame Ronge, to which
Rowland Hill sent his children, and to which Dickens paid frequent
visits. In the same year there was held in London an "International
Educational Exposition and Congress," and to this Madame von Marenholz
sent an exhibit, which was explained by Madame Ronge, and by a Mr.
Hoffmann. Dickens, who had watched the actual working of a Kindergarten,
gave warm support to the new ideas, and wrote an excellent article on
"Infant Gardens" for _Household Words_, urging "that since children are
by Infinite Wisdom so created as to find happiness in the active
exercise and development of all their faculties, we, who have children
round about us, shall no longer repress their energies, tie up their
bodies, shut their mouths.... The frolic of childhood is not pure
exuberance and waste. 'There is often a high meaning in childish play,'
said Froebel. Let us study it, and act upon the hints--or more than
hints--that Nature gives."
Sesame House for Home Life Training had been opened six months before
this Mission Kindergarten. It was founded by the Sesame Club, and at its
head was Miss Schepel, who for twenty years had been at the head of the
Pestalozzi Froebel House. The idea of Home Life Training attracted
students who were not obliged by stern necessity to earn their daily
bread. Though the methods were not quite in line with progressive
thought, the atmosphere created by Miss Schepel, warmly seconded by Miss
Buckton,[13] was one of enthusiasm in the service of children. The
second Nursery School in London had its origin in this enthusiasm. Miss
Maufe left Sesame House early in 1903, and started a free Child Garden
in West London. Four years later she moved to Westminster to a block of
workmen's dwellings erected on the site of the old Millbank Prison. This
"child garden" has a special interest from the fact that it was carried
on actually in a block of workmen's dwellings like The Children's
Houses of a later date. The effort was voluntary and the rooms were
small, but, if the experiment had been supported by the authorities, it
would have been easy to take down dividing walls to get sufficient
space. Miss Maufe gave herself and her income for about twelve years,
but difficulties created by the war, the impossibility of finding
efficient help and consequent drain upon her own strength have forced
her to close her little school, to the grief of the mothers in 48 Ruskin
Buildings. Another Sesame House student, Miss L. Hardy, in her charming
_Diary of a Free Kindergarten_, takes us from London to Edinburgh, but
the first Free Kindergarten in Edinburgh began in 1903 and had a
different origin. Miss Howden was an Infants' Mistress in one of the
slums, and knew well the needs of little children in that wide street,
once decked with lordly mansions, which leads from the Castle to
Holyrood Palace. Some of the fine houses are left, but the inhabitants
are of the poorest, and Miss Howden left her savings to start a Free
Kindergarten in the Canongate. The sum was not large, but it was seed
sown in faith, and its harvest has been abundant, for Edinburgh with its
population of under 400,000 has five Free Kindergartens, in all of which
the children are washed and fed and given restful sleep, as well as
taught and trained with intelligence and love. London with its
population of 6,000,000 had but eight up to the time of the outbreak of
the war.
In the meantime voluntary effort has done what it could. Birmingham had
good reason to be in the forefront, since many of its public-spirited
citizens had in their own childhood the benefit of the excellent works
of Miss Caroline Bishop, a disciple of Frau Schrader. The Birmingham
People's Kindergarten Association opened its first People's Kindergarten
at Greet, in 1904, and a second, the Settlement Kindergarten, in 1907.
Sir Oliver Lodge spoke strongly in favour of these institutions, calling
them a protest against the idea of the comparative unimportance of
childhood.
Miss Hardy opened her Child Garden in 1906, and that work has grown so
that the children are now kept till they are eight years old. The
Edinburgh Provincial Council for the Training of Teachers opened another
Free Kindergarten as a demonstration school for Froebelian methods, a
practising school for students, and also as an experimental school,
where attempts might be made to solve problems as to the education of
neglected children under school age. It was the Headmistress of this
school, Miss Hodsman, who invented the net beds now in general use. She
wanted something hygienic and light enough to be carried easily into the
garden, that in fine weather the children might sleep out of doors.
In 1910 Miss Lawrence succeeded in opening what was called from the
first the "Somers Town Nursery School," where the same kind of work is
done. One of the reports says: "It is interesting to see the children
sweeping or dusting a room, washing their dusters and dolls' clothes,
polishing the furniture, their shoes, and anything which needs
polishing. On Friday morning the 'silver' is cleaned, and the brilliant
results give great pleasure and satisfaction to the little polishers.
'Have you done your work?' was the question addressed to a visitor by a
three-year-old child, and the visitor beat a hasty retreat, ashamed
perhaps of being the only drone in the busy hive. At dinner time four
children wait on the rest, and very well and quickly the food is handed
round and the plates removed."
The Caldecott Nursery School was opened in 1911 and has grown into the
Caldecott Community, which has now taken its children to live altogether
in the country. This Nursery School was never intended to be a
Kindergarten; it was started as an interesting experiment, "chiefly
perhaps in the hope that the children might enjoy that instruction which
is usually absorbed by the children of the wealthy in their own
nurseries by virtue of their happier surroundings."
And in the very year in which we were plunged into war Miss Margaret
M'Millan put into actual shape what she had long thought of, and opened
her "Baby Camp" and Nursery School, with a place for "toddlers" in
between, the full story of which is told in _The, Camp School_. In the
Camp itself the things which impress the visitor most are first the
space and the fresh air, the sky above and the brown earth below, and
next the family feeling which is so plain in spite of the numbers. The
Camp existed long before it was a Baby Camp and Nursery School, for Miss
M'Millan began with a School Clinic and went on to Open-Air Camps for
girls and for boys, before going to the "preventive and constructive"
work of the Baby Camp. Clean and healthy bodies come first, but to Miss
M'Millan's enthusiasm everything in life is educative.
The war has increased the supply of Nursery Schools, because the need
for them has become glaringly apparent. Many experiments are going on
now, and it seems as if experimental work would be encouraged, not
hampered by unyielding regulations. The Nursery School should cover the
ages for which the Kindergarten was instituted, roughly from three to
six years old. Already there are excellent baby rooms in some parts of
London, and no doubt in other towns, and the only reason for disturbing
these is to provide the children with more space and more fresh air, or
with something resembling a garden rather than a bare yard.
One school in London has a creche or day nursery, not exactly a part of
it, but in closest touch, established owing to the efforts of an
enthusiastic Headmistress working along with the Norland Place nurses.
Its space is at present insufficient, but the neighbouring buildings are
condemned, and will come down after the war. They need not go up again.
Then the space could be used in the same way as in the Camp School. That
would be to the benefit of the whole neighbourhood, and there could be
at least one experiment where from creche to Standard VII. might be in
close connection.
We certainly want the help both of the trained nurse and of the motherly
woman. The trained nurse will be far more use in detecting and attending
to the ailments of children than the teacher can be, and the motherly
woman can give far more efficient help in training children to decent
habits than any young probationer, useful though these may be. But there
is always the fear that the nurses may think that good food and
cleanliness are all a child requires, and, as Miss M'Millan says, "The
sight of the toddlers' empty hands and mute lips does not trouble them
at all."
But every man to his trade, and though the teacher in charge must know
something about ailing children, it is very doubtful if a few months in
a hospital will advantage her much. Here she trenches on the province of
the real nurse, whose training is thorough, and the little knowledge,
as every one knows, is sometimes dangerous. One Nursery School teacher,
with years of experience, says that what she learned in hospital has
been of no use to her, and it is probable that attendance at a clinic
for children would be really more useful. Certainly the main concern of
the Nursery School teacher is sympathetic understanding of children.
There must be no more of _Punch's_ "Go and see what Tommy is doing in
the next room and tell him not to," but "Go and see what Tommy is trying
to accomplish, and make it possible for him to carry on his
self-education through that 'fostering of the human instincts of
activity, investigation and construction' which constitutes a
Kindergarten."
CHAPTER V
"The child's first utterance is force," says Froebel, and his first
discovery is the resistance of matter, when he "pushes with his feet
against what resists them." His first experiments are with his body,
"his first toys are his own limbs," and his first play is the use of
"body, senses and limbs" for the sake of use, not for result. One use
of his body is the imitation of any moving object, and Froebel tells the
mother:
At this stage the child is "to move freely, and be active, to grasp and
hold with his own hands." He is to stand "when he can sit erect and draw
himself up," not to walk till he "can creep, rise freely, maintain his
balance and proceed by his own effort." He is _not_ to be hindered by
swaddling bands--such as are in use in Continental countries--nor, later
on, to be "_spoiled by too much assistance_," words which every mother
and teacher should write upon her phylacteries. But as soon as he can
move himself the surroundings speak to the child, "outer objects
_invite_ him to seize and grasp them, and if they are distant, they
invite him who would bring them nearer to move towards them."
This use of the word "invite" is worthy of notice, and calls to mind a
sentence used by a writer on Freud,[14] that "the activity of a human
being is a constant function of his environment." We adults, who are so
ready with our "Don't touch," must endeavour to remember how everything
is shouting to a child: "Look at me, listen to me, come and fetch me,
and find out all you can about me by every means in your power."
From his first walk he is the geographer. "Each little walk is a tour
of discovery; each object--the chair, the wall--is an America, a new
world, which he either goes around to see if it be an island, or whose
coast he follows to discover if it be a continent. Each new phenomenon
is a discovery in the child's small and yet rich world, _e.g._ one may
go round the chair; one may stand before it, behind it, but one cannot
go behind the bench or the wall."
Next, the scientist must stock his laboratory with material for
experiment.
"The child is attracted by the bright round smooth pebble, by the gaily
fluttering bit of paper, by the smooth bit of board, by the rectangular
block, by the brilliant quaint leaf. Look at the child that can scarcely
keep himself erect, that can walk only with the greatest care--he sees a
twig, a bit of straw; painfully he secures it, and like the bird carries
it to his nest. See him again, laboriously stooping and slowly going
forward on the ground, under the eaves of the roof (the deep eaves of
the Thuringian peasant house). The force of the rain has washed out of
the sand smooth bright pebbles, and the ever-observing child gathers
them as building stones as it were, as material for future building. And
is he wrong? Is he not in truth collecting material for his future life
building?"
The "box of counters, and the red-veined stone," the brilliant quaint
leaf, the twig, the bit of straw, all the child's treasures--these are
the stimuli which, according to the biologist educator, must be supplied
if the activities appropriate to each stage are to be called forth.
Every one knows for how long a period a child can occupy himself
examining, comparing and experimenting.
This experimenting is one side of a child's play, and the things with
which he thus experiments are his toys, or, as Froebel puts it, "play
material." Much of this is and ought to be self found, and where the
child can find his own toys he asks for little more. The seaside
supplies him with sand and water, stones, shells, rock pools, seaweed,
and he asks us for nothing but a spade, which digs deeper than his naked
hands, and a pail to carry water, which hands alone cannot convey.
Even indoors, a child could probably find for himself all the material
for investigation, all the stimuli he requires, if it were not that his
investigations interfere with adult purposes. Even in very primitive
times the child probably experimented upon the revolving qualities of
his mother's spindle till she found it more convenient to let him have
one for himself, and it became a toy or top.
"To realise his aims, man, and more particularly the child, requires
material, though it be only a bit of wood or a pebble, with which he
makes something or which he makes into something. In order to lead the
child to the handling of material we give him the ball, the cube and
other bodies, the Kindergarten gifts. Each of these gifts incites the
child to free spontaneous activity, to independent movement."
Froebel asks what presents are most prized by the child and by mankind
in general, and answers, "Those which afford him a means of developing
his mind, of giving it freest activity, of expressing it clearly." For
her ideas as to educative material Dr. Montessori went, not to normal
life, not even to children, but to what may he called curative
appliances, to the material invented by S�guin to develop the dormant
powers of defective children. She herself came to the study of education
from the medical side, the curative. Froebel, with his belief in human
instinct, naturally went to what he called the mother's room, which we
should call the nursery, and to the garden where the child finds his
"bright round smooth pebble" and his "brilliant quaint leaf." No one
would seek to under-value the importance of sense discrimination, but it
can be exercised without formalism, and it need not be mere
discrimination. It is in connection with the Taste and Smell games that
Froebel tells the mother that "the higher is rooted in the lower,
morality in instinct, the spiritual in the material." The baby enjoys
the scent, thanks the kind spirit that put it there, and must let mother
smell it too, so from the beginning there is a touch of aesthetic
pleasure and a recognition of "what the dear God is saying outside." As
to how sense discrimination may be exercised without formality, there is
a charming picture in _The Camp School_:
"And then that sense of _Smell_, which got so little exercise and
attention that it went to sleep altogether, so that millions get no
warning and no joy through it. We met the need for its education in the
Baby Camp by having a Herb Garden. Back from the shelters and open
ground, in a shady place, we have planted fennel, mint, lavender, sage,
marjoram, thyme, rosemary, herb gerrard and rue. And over and above
these pungently smelling things there are little fields of mignonette.
We have balm, indeed, everywhere in our garden. The toddlers go round
the beds of herbs, pinching the leaves with their tiny fingers and then
putting their fingers to their noses. There are two little couples going
the rounds just now. One is a pair of new comers, very much astonished,
the other couple old inhabitants, delighted to show the wonders of the
place! Coming back with odorous hands, they perhaps want to tell us
about the journey. Their eyes are bright, their mouths open."
The first one we enter is certainly a large bright room, for one side is
open to light, with two large windows, and between them glass doors
opening into the playground. There is no heap of sand in a corner, nor
is there a tub of water; for the practical teacher knows how little
hands, if not little feet, with their vigorous but as yet uncontrolled
movements would splash the water and scatter the sand with dire effects
as to the floor, which the theorist fondly imagines would always be
clean enough to sit upon. But there is a sand-tray big enough and deep
enough for six to eight children to use individually or together. As
spontaneous activity, with its ceaseless efforts at experimenting,
ceaselessly spills the sand, within easy reach are little brushes and
dustpans to remedy such mishaps. The sand-tray is lined with zinc so
that the sand can be replaced by water for boats and ducks, etc., when
desired.
The low wall blackboard is there ready for use. Bright pictures are on
the walls, well drawn and well coloured, some from nursery rhymes, some
of Caldecott's, a frieze of hen and chickens, etc. Boxes for houses and
shops are not in evidence, but their place is taken by bricks of such
size and quantity that houses, shops, motors, engines and anything else
may be built large enough for the children themselves to be shopkeepers
or drivers, and there are also pieces of wood to use for various
purposes of construction. There is no cooking stove, but simple cooking
can be carried out on an open fire, and when a baking oven is required,
an eager procession makes its way to the kitchen, where a kindly
housekeeper permits the use of her oven. There is a doll's cot with a
few dolls of various sizes. There are flowers and growing bulbs. There
are light low tables and chairs, a family of guinea pigs in a large
cage, and there is a cupboard which the children can reach.
In the cupboard there are certain shelves from which anything may be
taken, and some from which nothing may be taken without leave. For the
teacher here is of opinion that children of even three and four are not
too young to begin to learn the lesson of _meum_ and _tuum_, and she
also thinks it is good to have some treasures which do not come out
every day, and which may require more delicate handling than the
ordinary toy ought to need. For this ought to be strong enough to bear
unskilled handling and vigorous movements, for a broken toy ought to be
a tragedy. At the same time it is part of a child's training to learn to
use dainty objects with delicate handling, and such things form the
children's art gems, showing beauty of construction and of colour.
Children as well as grown-ups have their bad days, when something out of
the usual is very welcome. "Do you know there's nothing in this world
that I'm not tired of?" was said one day by a boy of six usually quite
contented. "Give me something out of the cupboard that I've never seen
before," said another whose digestion was troublesome. The open shelves
contain pencils and paper, crayons, paint-boxes, boxes of building
blocks, interlocking blocks, wooden animals, jigsaw and other puzzles,
coloured tablets for pattern laying, toy scales, beads to thread,
dominoes, etc., the only rule being that what is taken out must be
tidily replaced. This Kindergarten is part of a large institution, and
the playground, to which it has direct access, is of considerable
extent. There is a big stretch of grass and another of asphalt, so that
in suitable weather the tables and chairs, the sand-tray, the bricks and
anything else that is wanted can be carried outside so that the children
can live in the open, which of course is better than any room. In the
playground there is a bank where the children can run up and down, and
there are a few planks and a builder's trestle,[16] on which they can be
poised for seesaws or slides, and these are a constant source of
pleasure.
For representations of real life the children require dolls and the
simplest of furniture--a bed, which need only be a box, some means of
carrying out the doll's washing, her personal requirements as well as
her clothes; some little tea-things and pots and pans. A doll's house is
not necessary, and can only be used by two or three children, but will
be welcomed if provided, and its appointments give practice in dainty
handling. Trains and signals of some kind, home-made or otherwise;
animals for farm or Zoo; a pair of scales for a shop, and some sort of
delivery van, which, of course, may be home-made.
All sorts of odds and ends come in useful, and especially for the poorer
children these should be provided. Any one who remembers the pleasure
derived from coloured envelope bands, from transparent paper from
crackers, and from certain advertisements, will save these for children
to whose homes such treasures never come. A box containing scraps of
soft cloth, possibly a bit of velvet, some bits of smooth and shining
coloured silk give the pleasure of sense discrimination without the
formality of the Montessori graded boxes, and are easier to replace.
Some substitute for "mother's button box," a box of shells or coloured
seeds, a box of feathers, all these things will be played with, which
means observation and discrimination, comparison and contrast, and in
addition, where colour is involved, there is aesthetic pleasure, and
this also enters into the touching of smooth or soft surfaces. Softness
is a joy to children, as is shown in the woolly lambs, etc., provided
for babies. A little one of my acquaintance had a bit of blanket which
comforted many woes, and when once I offered her a feather boa as a
substitute she sobbed out: "It isn't so soft as the blanket!"
In one of Miss McMillan's early books she wrote: "Very early the child
begins more or less consciously to exercise the basal sense--the sense
of touch. On waking from sleep he puts his tiny hands to grasp
something, or turns his head on the firm soft pillow. He _touches_
rather than looks, at first (for his hands and fingers perform a great
many movements long before he learns to turn his eyeballs in various
directions or follow the passage even of a light), and through touching
many things he begins his education. If he is the nursling of wealthy
parents, it is possible that his first exercises are rather restricted.
He touches silk, ivory, muslin and fine linen. That is all, and that is
not much. But the child of the cottager is often better off, for his
mother gives him a great variety of objects to keep him quiet. The
ridiculous command, 'Do not touch,' cannot be imposed on him while he is
screaming in his cradle or protesting in his dinner chair; and so all
manner of things--reels, rings, boxes, tins, that is to say a variety of
surfaces--is offered to him, to his great delight and advantage. And
lest he should not get the full benefit of such privilege he carries
everything to his mouth, where the sense of touch is very keen."[17]
Among the treasures kept for special occasions there may be pipes for
soap-bubbles, a prism of some kind with which to make rainbows, a tiny
mirror to make "light-birds" on the wall and ceiling, and a magnet with
the time-honoured ducks and fish, if these are still to be bought, along
with other articles, delicately made or coloured, which require care.
CHAPTER VI
In every country and in every age those who have eyes to see have
watched the same little dramas. What Wordsworth saw was seen nineteen
hundred years ago in the Syrian market-place, where the children
complained of their unresponsive companions: "We have piped the glad
chaunt of the marriage, but ye have not danced, we have wailed our
lamentation, but ye have not joined our mourning procession."
Since the very name Kindergarten is to imply a teaching which fulfils
the child's own wants and desires, it must supply abundant provision for
the dramatic representation of life. Adults have always been ready to
use for their own purposes the strong tendency to imitate, which is a
characteristic of all normal children, but few even now realise to what
extent a child profits by his imitative play. The explanation that
Froebel found for this will now be generally accepted, viz. that only by
acting it out can a child fully grasp an idea, "For what he tries to
represent or do, he begins to understand." He thinks in action, or as
one writer put it, he "apperceives with his muscles." This explanation
seems to cover imitative play, from the little child's imitative wave of
the hand up to such elaborate imitations as are described in Stanley
Hall's _Story of a Sand Pile,_[18] or in Dewey's _Schools of
To-morrow._ But when we think of the joy of such imaginative play as
that of Red Indians, shipwrecks and desert islands, we feel that these
show a craving for experience, for life, such a craving as causes the
adult to lose himself in a book of travels or in a dramatic performance,
and which explains the phenomenal success of the cinema, poor stuff as
it is.
What was the reason for this binding of things together? Why did
Froebel constantly plead for "unity" even for the tiny child, and tell
us to link together his baby finger-games or his first weak efforts at
building with his blocks chairs, tables, beds, walls and ladders?
Kindergarten practice was far ahead of this, for here the teacher was
expected to choose her material according to (1) Time of Year; (2) Local
Conditions, such as the pursuits of the people; (3) Social Customs. When
it was possible the children went to see the real blacksmith or the real
cow, and to let game or handwork be an expression, and a re-ordering of
ideas gained was natural and right. Connectedness, however, meant more
than this, it meant that the material itself was to be treated so that
the children would be helped to that real understanding which comes
from seeing things in their relations to each other. As Lloyd Morgan
puts it, "We are mainly at work upon the mental background. It is our
object to make this background as rich and full and orderly as possible,
so that whatever is brought to the focus of consciousness shall be set
in a relational background, which shall give it meaning; and so that our
pupils may be able to feel the truth which Browning puts into the mouth
of Fra Lippo Lippi:
Every one has heard something of the new teaching--which, by the way,
sheds clearer light over Froebel's warning against arbitrary
interference--viz. that a great part of the nervous instability which
affects our generation is due to the thwarting and checking of the
natural impulses of early years. But this new school also gives us
something positive, and reinforces older doctrines by telling us to
integrate behaviour. "This matter of the unthwarted lifelong progress
of behaviour integration is of profound importance, for it is the
transition from behaviour to conduct. The more integrated behaviour is
harmonious and consistent behaviour toward a larger and more
comprehensive situation, toward a bigger section of the universe; it is
lucidity and breadth of purpose. The child playing with fire is only
wrong conduct because it is behaviour that does not take into account
consequences; it is not adjusted to enough of the environment; it will
be made right by an enlargement of its scope and reach."[19]
All selfish conduct, all rudeness and roughness come from ignorance; we
are all more or less self-centred, and the child's consciousness of self
has to be widened, his scope has to be enlarged to sympathy with the
thoughts, feelings and desires of other selves. "The sane man is the man
who (however limited the scope of his behaviour) has no such suppression
incorporated in him. The wise man must be sane and must have scope as
well."[20]
Since Professor Dewey gave to the world the results of his experimental
school, all the Kindergartens and most of the Infant Schools in England
have tried to carry out their accustomed reproduction of home
surroundings, more or less on the lines of the Primary Department of his
experimental school. They have extended their scope, and in addition to
the material already taken from workman and shop, from garden and farm,
have also with much profit to older children used his suggestions about
primitive industries.
Our own children used to settle this by taking out the furniture, etc.,
and arranging different homes around the room. I can remember the
never-ending pleasure given by similar play in my own nursery days, when
the actors were the men and boys supplied by tailors' advertisements.
Many and varied were the experiences of these paper families, families,
it may be noted, none of whom demeaned themselves so far as to possess
any womankind. For that nursery party of five had lost its mother sadly
early and was ruled by two boys, who evidently thought little of the
other sex.
Mr. Bird required a family, so Mrs. Bird had to be produced with her
little girl Winnie, and later a baby was added to the family. Beds,
tables and chairs, including a high chair for Winnie, were made of
scraps from the wood box, and for a long time Mr. Bird was most
domesticated. Miss Payne had used ordinary dolls' heads, but had
constructed the bodies herself in such a way that the dolls could sit
and stand, and use their arms to wield a broom or hold the baby. After
some time, one child said, "Mr. Bird ought to go to business," and after
much deliberation he became a grocer. His shop was made and stocked, and
he attended it every day, going home to dinner regularly. One day he
appeared to be having a meal on the shop counter, and it was explained
that he had been "rather in a hurry" in the morning, so Mrs. Bird had
given him his breakfast to take with him. The Bird family had various
adventures, they had spring cleanings, removals, visited the Zoo and
went to the seaside. One morning a little fellow sat in a trolley with
the Bird family beside him for three-quarters of an hour evidently
"imagining." I did inquire in passing if it was a drive or a picnic, but
the answer was so brief, that I knew I was an interruption and retired.
But a younger and bolder inquirer, who wanted to conduct an experiment
in modelling, ventured to ask if Mr. Bird wanted anything that could be
made "at clay modelling." "Yes, he wants some ink-pots for his
post-office shop," was the answer, with the slightly irate addition,
"but I _wish_ you'd call it the china factory."
When these children moved to an upper class, Mr. Bird was laid away, but
the children requested his presence. So he entered the new room and
became a farmer. He had now to write letters, to arrange rents, etc.,
and the money had to be made and counted. The letters served for writing
and reading lessons, and Miss Payne was careful to send the answers
through the real post, properly addressed to Mr. Bird with the name of
class and school. Mr. Bird hired labourers, the children grew corn, and
thrashed it and sent it to the mill. A miller had to be produced, and
the children, now his assistants, ground the wheat, and Mr. Bird came in
his cart to fetch the sacks of flour, which ultimately became the Birds'
Christmas pudding and was eaten by the labourers, now guests at the
feast. In spring, after careful provision for their comfort, Mr. Bird
went to the cattle market and bought cows. Though the milking had to be
pretence, the butter and cheese were really made.
The first question of the summer term was, "What's Mr. Bird going to do
this term?" Like other teachers inspired by Professor Dewey, we have
found our children most responsive to the suggestion of playing out
primitive man. But with some, not of course with the brightest, it is
too great a stretch to go at one step from the present to the most
primitive times, and we often spend a term over something of the nature
of Robinson Crusoe, where the situation presents characters accustomed
to modern civilisation and deprived of all its conveniences. Miss Payne
is careful to give the children full opportunity for suggestions--one
dull little boy puzzled his mother by telling her "I made a very good
'gestion' to-day"--so though she had not contemplated the renewed
appearance of Mr. Bird she said, "What do you want him to do?" "Let him
go out and shoot bears," cried an embryo sportsman. Somewhat taken
aback, Miss Payne temporised with, "He wouldn't find them in this
country." "Then let him go to India," cried one child, but another
called out, "No, no, let him go to a desert island!" and that was
carried with acclamation. Mr. Bird's various homes were on a miniature
scale, and were contained in a series of zinc trays, which we have had
made to fit the available tables and cupboard tops. We find these trays
convenient, as a new one can be added when more scope is required to
carry out new ideas.
The following accounts taken from the notes of Miss Hilda Beer, while a
student in training, show another kind of play where the children
themselves act the drama. The notes only cover a short period, but they
show how the play may arise quite incidentally.
_Mon., June 18._--As the ground is too damp for out-of-doors work, if
the children were not ready with plans, I meant to suggest building a
railway station, tunnel, etc., and later, I thought perhaps we might
paint advertisements of seaside resorts for our station.
But the children brought several things with them, and Dorothy brought
her own doll. Marie had left the baby doll from the other room in the
cot, so Dorothy and Sylvia said they must look after the babies. So
Cecil, Josie and I swept and dusted.
Then we began to play house. Cecil and Dorothy were Mr. and Mrs. Harry,
Sylvia was Mrs. Loo (husband at the war). Josie was Nurse and I was
Aunt Lizzie. The dolls were Winnie Harry, and Jack and Doreen Loo. Mr.
and Mrs. Harry built themselves a house and so did we. Cecil said, "But
what is the name of the road?" Mrs. Harry chose 25 Brookfield Avenue,
and Mr. Harry 7 Victoria Street, but he gave in and Mrs. Loo took his
name for her house. We had to put numbers on the houses; Sylvia could
make 7, but the others could not make 25, so I put it on the board and
they copied it. Josie having also made a 7 wanted to use it, but Mrs.
Loo objected, and said, "The mother is more important than the nurse,"
so Josie fixed her 7 on the house opposite.
After lunch we bathed the babies and put them to sleep, and as it was
time for the children's own rest, we all went to bed. When rest was
over, we washed and dressed, and then Mrs. Harry asked for clay to make
a water-tap for her house. That made all the children want to make
things in clay, so we made cups and saucers, plates, and a baby's
bottle, then scones and sponge-cakes, bread and a bread-board, and one
of the children said we must put a B on that.
Then Mrs. Loo said, "But we haven't any shelves." I had to leave my
class in Miss Payne's charge, and they spent the rest of the time
fitting in shelves, water-taps, and sinks.
_June 19._--After sweeping, dusting, and washing and dressing the dolls,
I read to the children "How the House was built." Then we all pretended
to bake, making rolls and cakes as next day was to be the doll Winnie's
birthday. We baked our cakes on a piece of wood on the empty fireplace.
As neither of the houses would hold all the guests invited to the party,
we had to have a picnic instead.
_June_ 20.--I must see that Sylvia and Dorothy do the sweeping
to-morrow, and let Josie bath the doll; she is very good-natured, and I
see that they give her the less attractive occupation. I think too that
the food question has played too large a part, so if the children
suggest more cooking I shall look in the larder and say that really we
must not buy or bake as food goes bad in hot weather, and we must not
waste in war time.
_Report_.--Dorothy and Sylvia swept, Cecil mended the wall of the house,
Josie took the children down to the beach (the sand tray), and I dusted.
We looked into the larder and found that yesterday's greens were going
bad, so decided not to buy more. Then we took the babies for a walk. We
noticed how many nasturtiums were out, how the blackberry bushes were in
flower and in bud, and the runner-bean was in flower, and the red
flowers looked so pretty in the green leaves. We looked at the
hollyhocks, because I have told the children that they will grow taller
than I am, and they are always wondering how soon this will be. The
children found some cherries which had fallen, and Dorothy said how
pretty they were on the tree. I called attention to one branch that was
laden with fruit, and looked particularly pretty with the sun shining on
it. We also looked at the pear tree and the almond. Everything has come
on so fast, and the children were ready to say it was because of the
rain.
After rest, we went to the Hall to see the chickens. To-day they were
much bigger, and Sylvia said had "bigger wings." We were able to watch
them drinking, how they hold up their heads to let the water run down.
The rest of the morning we made curtains, and the children loved it.
There was much discussion and at first the children suggested making
them all different, but they agreed that curtains at windows were
usually alike. Mr. and Mrs. Harry nearly quarrelled, as one wanted green
and the other pink. I suggested trimming the green with a strip of pink,
and they were quite pleased. Mrs. Loo and Nurse chose green which was to
be sewn with red silk. Sylvia said, "A pattern," and I said, "You saw
something red and green to-day," and she called out, "Oh! cherries." She
cut out a round of paper and tried to sew round it, holding it in place
with her other hand. I suggested putting in a stitch to hold the paper.
Cecil was absorbed in sewing, and it seemed quieting for such an
excitable boy and good for his weak hands. One child said, "Fancy a boy
sewing," so I told how soldiers and sailors sewed. They sewed just as
they liked.
These notes are continued in Chapter IX., where they are used to show
children's attitude towards Nature. Though separated here for a special
purpose it is clear that there neither is nor ought to be any real
separation in the lives of the children. Their lives are wholes and they
continually pass from one "subject" to another, because life and its
circumstances are making new demands. If it rains and you cannot gather
the lettuces you have grown from seed, you take refuge in happy
pretence; if it clears and the sun calls you out of doors, you take your
doll-babies for their walk.
CHAPTER VII
JOY IN MAKING
ROBERT BRIDGES.
ARTHUR CLOUGH.
There has always been _making_ in the Kindergarten, since to Froebel the
impulse to create was a characteristic of self-conscious humanity.
Stopford Brooke points out that Browning's Caliban, though almost brute,
shows himself human, in that, besides thinking out his natural religion,
he also dramatises and creates, "falls to make something."
What does a child gain from his ceaseless attempts at making? Froebel's
answer was that intellectually, through making he gains ideas, which,
received in words, remain mere words. "To learn through life and action
is more developing than to learn through words: expression in plastic
material, united with thought and speech, is far more developing than
mere repetition of words." Morally, it is through impressing himself on
his surroundings, that the child reaches the human attributes of
self-consciousness and self-control. One of the most important passages
Froebel ever wrote is this:
When children see anything rich in colour the general cry is "Let's
paint it," which is their way of taking in the beauty. We should not,
says Froebel, give them paints and brushes inconsiderately, to throw
about, but give them the help they need, and he describes quite a
sensible lesson given to boys "whose own painting did not seem to paint
them long."
Teachers who want real help in the art training of children should read
the excellent papers by Miss Findlay in _School and Life_, where we are
told that we must rescue the term "design" from the limited uses to
which it is often condemned in the drawing class, viz. the construction
of pleasing arrangements of colour and form for surface decoration. "We
shall use it in its full popular significance in constructive work....
The term will cover building houses, making kettles, laying out streets,
planning rooms, dressing hair, as well as making patterns for cushion
covers and cathedral windows.... In thus widening our art studies, we
shall be harking back in a slight degree to the kind of training that in
past ages produced the great masters.... Giotto designed his Campanile
primarily for the bells that were to summon the Florentines to their
cathedral; the Venetians wanted fa�ades for their palaces, and made
fa�ades to delight their eyes; the Japanese have wanted small furniture
for their small rooms, and have developed wonderful skill and taste in
designing it. Neither art nor science can remain long afloat in high
abstract regions above the needs and interests of human life. To quote
A.H. Clough:
The child then who is making, especially making for use, is to a certain
extent developing himself as an artist.
The little boys at Keilhau were well provided with sand, moss, etc., to
use with their building blocks, and it was a former Keilhau boy who
suggested to his old master that some kind of sand-box would make a good
plaything for the children in his new Kindergarten. Miss Wiggin tells us
that indirectly we owe the children's sand-heaps in the public parks to
Froebel, since these were the result of a suggestion made by Frau
Schrader to the Empress Frederick, and the idea was carried out during
her husband's too brief reign.
Building blocks are truly, as Froebel puts it, "the finest and most
variable material that can be offered a boy for purposes of
representation." The little boxes associated with the Kindergarten were
originally planned for the use of nursery children two to three years of
age, and in most if not in all Kindergartens these have been replaced by
larger bricks. It is many years now since, at Miss Payne's suggestion,
we bought some hundreds of road paving blocks, and these are such a
source of pleasure that the children often dream about them. Living out
the life around presents much opportunity for making, which may be done
with blocks, but which even in the Kindergarten can be done with tools.
Care must be exercised, but children have quite a strong instinct for
self-preservation, and if shown how real workmen handle their tools,
they are often more careful than at a much later stage. To make a
workable railway signal is more interesting and much more educative than
to use one that came from a shop. The teacher may make illuminating
discoveries in the process, as when one set of children desired to make
a counter for a shop, and arranged their piece of wood vertically so
that the counter had no top. It was found that to these very little
people the most important part was the high front against which they
were accustomed to stand, not the flat top which they seldom saw.
Another set of children made a cart on which the farmer was to carry his
corn, and exemplified Dewey's "concrete logic of action." At first they
only wanted a board on wheels, but the corn fell off, so they nailed on
sides, but the cart never had either back or front and resembled some
seen in Early English pictures.
Any kind of cooking that can be done is a most important kind of making;
even the very little ones can help, and they thoroughly enjoy watching.
"Her hands were in the dough from three years old," said a north-country
mother, "so I taught her how to bake, and now (at seven) she can bake as
well as I can."
Butter and cheese can easily be made, also jam, and even a Christmas
pudding. In very early Kindergartens we read of the growing, digging and
cooking of potatoes, and of the extraction of starch to be used as
paste.
STORIES
Let me tell the stories and I care not who makes the textbooks.
STANLEY HALL.
"Is it Bible story to-day or any _kind_ of a story?" was the greeting of
an eager child one morning. "Usually they were persuading him to tell
stories," writes Ebers, from his recollections of Froebel as an old man
at Keilhau. "He was never seen crossing the courtyard without a group of
the younger pupils hanging to his coat tails and clasping his arms.
Usually they were persuading him to tell stories, and when he
condescended to do so, the older ones flocked around him, too, and they
were never disappointed. What fire, what animation the old man had
retained!"
So Froebel could write with feeling of "the joyful faces, the sparkling
eyes, the merry shouts that welcome the genuine story-teller"; he had a
right to pronounce that "the child's desire and craving for tales, for
legends, for all kinds of stories, and later on for historical accounts,
is very intense."
Surely there was never a little one who did not crave for stories,
though here and there may be found an older child, who got none at the
right time, and who, therefore, lost that most healthy of appetites.
Most of us will agree that there is something wrong with the child who
does not like stories, but it may be that the something wrong belonged
to the mother. One such said to the Abb� Klein one day, "My children
have never asked for stories." "But, madame," was the reply, "neither
would they ask for cake if they had never eaten it, or even seen it."
First, then, we tell stories because we love to tell them and because
the children love to listen. We choose stories that appeal to our
audience. It is something beautiful, humorous, heroic or witty that we
have found, and being social animals we want to share it. As educators
with an aim before us, we deliberately tell stories in order to place
before our children ideals of unselfishness, courage and truth. We know
from our own experience, not only in childhood, but all through life how
the story reaches our feelings as no sermon or moralising ever does, and
we have learned that "out of the heart are the issues of life." Unguided
feelings may be a danger, but the story does more than rouse
feelings--it gives opportunity for the exercise of moral judgement, for
the exercise of judgement upon questions of right and wrong. Feeling is
aroused, but it is not usually a personal feeling, so judgement is
likely to be unbiassed. It may, however, be biassed by the tone absorbed
from the environment even in childhood, as when the mother makes more of
table etiquette than of kindness, and the child, instead of condemning
Jacob's refusal to feed his hungry brother with the red pottage, as all
natural children do condemn, says: "No, Esau shouldn't have got it,
'cause he asked for it."
Froebel sums up the teacher's aim in the words: "The telling of stories
is a truly strengthening spirit-bath, it gives opportunity for the
exercise of all mental powers, opportunity for testing individual
judgement and individual feelings."
But why is it that children crave for stories? "Education," says Miss
Blow, a veteran Froebelian, "is a series of responses to indicated
needs," and undoubtedly the need for stories is as pressing as the need
to explore, to experiment and to construct. What is the unconscious need
that is expressed in this craving, why is this desire so deeply
implanted by Nature? So far, no one seems to have given a better answer
than Froebel has done, when he says that the desire for stories comes
out of the need to understand life, that it is in fact rooted in the
instinct of investigation. "Only the study of the life of others can
furnish points of comparison with the life the boy himself has
experienced. The story concerns other men, other circumstances, other
times and places, yet the hearer seeks his own image, he beholds it and
no one knows that he sees it."
With very young children the most popular of all stories is the "The
Three Bears" and it is worth a little analysis. A little girl runs away,
and running away is a great temptation to little girls and boys, as
great an adventure as running off to sea will be at a later stage. She
goes into a wood and meets bears: what else could you expect! The story
then deals with really interesting things, porridge, basins, chairs and
beds. The strong contrast of the bears' voices fascinates children, and
just when retribution might descend upon her, the heroine escapes and
gets safe home. Children revel in the familiar details, but these alone
would not suffice, there must be adventure, excitement, romance. One
feels that Southey had the assistance of a child in making his story so
complete, and we can hear the questions: "How did the big bear know that
the little girl had tasted his porridge? Oh, because she had left the
spoon. How did he know that she had sat in his chair? Because she left
the cushion untidy, and as for the little bear's chair, why, she sat
that right out."
"Once upon a time there was a giant and a little girl, and he told a
little girl not to kiss a bear acos he would bite her, and the little
girl climbed right on his back and she jumped right down the stairs and
the bear came walking after the little girl and kissing her, and she
called it a little bear and it was a big bear! (immense amusement).
"Once upon a time there was a little piggy and he was right in a big
green and white fire and he didn't hurt hisself, and (told as a
tremendous secret) he touched a fire with his handie. 'What a naughty
piggy,' said Auntie, 'and what next?' He jumped right out of a fire.
Auntie, can you smile? (For aunties cannot smile when people are
naughty.)"
The third story is said to have been filled with pauses due to a certain
slowness of speech, but the pauses are "lit by the lightning flash of a
flying eyebrow, and the impressive nodding of a silken head."
"Once, you know, there was a fight between a little pony and a lion, and
the lion sprang against the pony and the pony put his back against a
stack and bited towards the lion, and the lion rolled over and the pony
jumped up, and he ran up ... and the pony turned round and the lion ..."
His mother felt she had lost the thread. "Which won?" she asked. "Which
won!" he repeated and after a moment's pause he said, "Oh! the little
bear."
Very soon, however, the children are ready for the time-honoured
fairy-tale or folk-tale.
"Both child and man," says Froebel, "desire to know the significance of
what happens around them; this is the foundation of Greek choruses,
especially in tragedy, and of many productions in the realm of legends
and fairy-tales. It is the result of the deep-rooted consciousness, the
slumbering premonition of being surrounded by that which is higher and
more conscious than ourselves." The fairy tale is the child's mystery
land, his recognition that there are more things in heaven and earth
than are dreamt of in our philosophy or in our science. Dr. Montessori
protests against the idea that fairy-tales have anything to do with the
religious sense, saying that "faith and fable are as the poles apart."
She does not understand that it is for their truth that we value
fairy-tales. The truths they teach are such as that courage and
intelligence can conquer brute strength, that love can brave and can
overcome all dangers and always finds the lost, that kindness begets
kindness and always wins in the end. The good and the faithful marries
the princess--or the prince--and lives happy ever after. And assuredly
if he does not marry his princess, he will not live happy, and if she
does not marry the prince, she will live in no beautiful palace. And
there is more. Take for instance, the story of "Toads and Diamonds." The
courteous maiden who goes down the well, who gives help where it is
needed, and who works faithfully for Mother Holle,[21] comes home again
dropping gold and diamonds when she speaks. Her silence may be silver,
but her speech is golden, and her words give light in dark places. The
selfish and lazy girl, who refuses help and whose work is unfaithful and
only done for reward, has her reward. Henceforth, when she speaks, down
fall toads and snakes her words are cold as she is, they may glitter but
they sting.
Fairy- and folk-tales give wholesome food to the desire for adventure,
whereas in what we may call realistic stories, adventure is chiefly
confined to the naughty child, who is therefore more attractive than the
good and stodgy. Even among fairy-tales we may select. "Beauty and the
Beast" and "The Sleeping Beauty" and "Snow-white and Rose-red" are
distinctly preferable to "Jack the Giant Killer" or "Puss in Boots,"
while "Bluebeard" cannot be told. It seems to me that children can often
safely read for themselves stories the adult cannot well tell. The
child's notion of justice is crude, bad is bad, and whether embodied in
an ogre or in Pharaoh of Egypt, it must be got rid of, put out of the
story. No child is sorry for the giant when Jack's axe cleaves the
beanstalk, and as for Pharaoh, "Well, it's a good thing he's drowned,
for he was a bad man, wasn't he?" Death means nothing to children, as a
rule, except disappearance. When children can read for themselves, they
will take from their stories what suits their stage of development,
their standard of judgement, and we need not interfere, even though they
regard with perfect calm what seems gruesome to the adult.
George Macdonald's stories are all too well known and too universally
beloved to need recommendation. But in telling them, _e.g._ "The
Princess and the Goblins" or "At the Back of the North Wind," the young
teacher must remember that they are beautiful allegories. Before she
ventures to tell them, the beginner should ponder well what the
poet--for these are prose poems--means, and who is represented by the
beautiful Great-great-grandmother always old and always young, or "North
Wind" who must sink the ship but is able to bear the cry from it,
because of the sound of a far-off song, which seems to swallow up all
fear and pain and to set the suffering "singing it with the rest."
Such stories must be spread out over many days of telling, but they gain
rather than lose from that, though for quite young children the stories
do require to be short and simple, and often repeated. If children get
plenty of these, the stage for longer stories is reached wonderfully
soon.
Illustrations are not always necessary, but if well chosen they are
always a help. Warne has published some delightfully illustrated stories
for little children, "The Three Pigs," "Hop o' my Thumb," "Beauty and
the Beast," etc. They are illustrated by H.M. Brock and by Leslie
Brooke, and they really are illustrated. The artists have enjoyed the
stories and children equally enjoy the pictures.
The teacher must consider what ideas she is presenting and whether words
alone can convey them properly. We must remember that most children
visualise and that they can only do so from what they have seen. So,
without illustrations, a castle may be a suburban house with Nottingham
lace curtains and an aspidistra, while Perseus or Moses may differ
little from the child's own father or brothers. Again, town children
cannot visualise hill and valley, forest and moor, brook and river, not
to mention jungles and snowfields and the trackless ocean. It is not
easy to find pictures to give any idea of such scenes, but it is worth
while to look for them, and it is also worth while for the teacher to
visualise, and to practise vivid describing of what she sees. Children,
of course, only want description when it is really a part of the story,
as when Tom crosses the moor, descends Lewthwaite Crag, or travels from
brook to river and from river to sea.
Lastly, if the story is to make the children feel, let us see that the
feeling is on the right side, that they shrink from all that is mean,
selfish, cruel and cowardly, and sympathise with whatsoever things are
true, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good
report.
CHAPTER IX
IN GRASSY PLACES
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky,
So was it when my life began
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die.
In its answer to the question "What is the chief end of man?" the old
Shorter Catechism has a grand beginning: "Man's chief end is to glorify
God and to enjoy Him for ever." Do we lose the vision because we are not
bold enough to take that enjoyment as our chief end? To enjoy good is to
enjoy God.
Our ends or aims are our desires, and Mr. Clutton Brock, in his
_Ultimate Belief_, urges teachers to recognise that the spirit of man
has three desires, three ends, and that it cannot be satisfied till it
attains all three. Man desires to do right, so far as he sees it, for
the sake of doing right; he desires to gain knowledge or to know for the
sake of knowing, for the sake of truth; and he desires beauty.
Froebel begins his _Education of Man_ by an inquiry into the reason for
our existence and his answer is that _all_ things exist to make manifest
the spirit, the _�lan vital_, which brought them into being. "_Sursum
corda_," says Stevenson,
And Browning? "If you get simple beauty and nought else, you get about
the best thing God invents."
To let children get that beauty should be our aim, and they must get it
in their own way. "Life in and with Nature and with the fair silent
things of Nature, should be fostered by parents and others," Froebel
tells us, "as a chief fulcrum of child-life, and this is accomplished
chiefly in play, which is at first simply natural life."
Let us surmount the ruts of our teaching experience and climb high
enough to look back upon our own childhood, to see where beauty called
to us, where we attained to beauty.
Among my own earliest recollections come a first view of the starry sky
and the discovery of Heaven. No one called attention to the stars, they
spoke themselves to a child of four or five and declared "the glory of
God." Heaven was not on high among these glorious stars, however. It was
a grassy place with flowers and sunshine. It had to be Heaven because
you went through the cemetery to reach it, and because it was so bright
and flowery and there were no graves in it. I never found it again,
because I had forgotten how to get there.
Another very early memory is one of grief, to see from the window how
the gardener was mowing down all the daisies, and there were so many, in
the grass; and yet another is of a high, grassy, sunny field with a
little stream running far down below. It was not really far and there
was nothing particularly beautiful in the place to grown-up eyes, but
the beholder was very small and loved it dearly. To his Art and Blue
Heaven Stevenson might have added Sun and Green Grass. For he knew what
grassy places are to the child, and that "happy play in grassy places"
might well be Heaven to the little one.
[Footnote 22: G. Hansen, pub. Elder, Morgan & Shepherd, San Francisco,
1891.]
All children should live in the country at least for part of the year.
They should know fields and gardens, and have intercourse with hens and
chickens, cows and calves, sheep and lambs; should make hay and see the
corn cut. They would still want the wisely sympathetic teacher, not to
arouse interest--that is not necessary, but to keep it alive by keeping
pace with the child's natural development. It is not merely living in
the country that develops the little child's interest in shape and
colour and scent into something deeper. People still "spend all their
time in the fields and forests and see and feel nothing of the beauties
of Nature, and of their influence on the human heart"; and this, said
Froebel--and it is just what Mr. Clutton Brock is saying now--is because
the child "fails to find the same feelings among adults." Two effects
follow: the child feels the want of sympathy and loses some respect for
the elder, and also he loses his original joy in Nature.
Children revel in colour, colour for its own sake, and should be allowed
to create it. In a modern novel there is a description of a mother doing
her washing in the open air and "at her feet sat a baby intent upon the
assimilation of a gingerbread elephant, but now and then tugging at her
skirts and holding up a fat hand. Each time he was rewarded by a dab of
soapsuds, which she deposited good-naturedly in his palm. He received it
with solemn delight; watching the roseate play of colour as the bubbles
shrank and broke, and the lovely iridescent treasure vanished in a smear
of dirty wetness while he looked. Then he would beat his fists
delightedly against his mother's dress and presently demand another
handful."
The following notes from another student's report show how this may
spring naturally out of the children's life:[23]
"We were spinning the teetotum yesterday and it did not spin well so we
made new ones. While the children were painting their tops, Oliver grew
very eager when he found he could fill in all the spaces in different
colours, but Betty made her colours very insipid. I want them to get the
feeling of beautiful colour, so I shall show them a book with the
colours graded in it, and we shall each have a paper and paint on it all
the rich colours we can think of. The colours will probably run into
each other, and so the children will get ideas about the blending of
colours, but I will watch to see that they do not get the colour too
wet. If they are not tired of painting I want to show them a painted
circle to turn on a string and they can make these for themselves, using
the colours they have already used.
"I want the children to do some group work, and I thought we might make
a village with shops and houses under the trees in the garden and have
little men and women to represent ourselves. The suggestion will
probably have to come from the teacher, but the children will probably
have the desire when it is suggested, and I hope we shall be able to go
on enlarging our town on the pattern of the towns the children know. If
they want bricks for their houses they can dig clay in the garden.
This is clearly the time to show a glass prism and to let these children
make rainbows for themselves, to tell the story of Iris, and to use any
colour material, Milton Bradley spectrum papers, Montessori silks,
colour top, and anything else so long as the children keep up their
interest. The interest in colour need never die out; it will probably
show itself now in finer discrimination, and more careful reproduction
of the colours of flowers and leaves, and the sympathy given will
heighten interest and increase enjoyment.
[Footnote 24: These notes are part of those already given on pp. 68-71.]
"Another example of love and rhythm was when they went to say good-bye
to the hen and chickens, and kept on repeating 'Good-bye, good-bye' all
together, nodding their heads at the same time.
"I did not know if I should have let them do so much, but I was not sure
that we should be allowed to come back and I wanted them to enjoy the
garden.
"We rested outside to-day under an almond tree. I pointed out how pretty
the sky looked when you only saw it peeping through the leaves. After
rest the children noticed feathery grasses, and spent the rest of the
morning gathering them. I suggested that they should see how many kinds
they could find. They found three, but were not enthusiastic about it,
being content just to pluck, but they were delighted when they found
specially long and beautiful grasses hidden deep under a leafy bush.
They also found clover leaves, and I told them its name and sang to them
the verse from 'The Bee,' with 'The sweet-smelling clover, he, humming,
hangs over.'
"They joined the Transition Class for games. Later, while playing with
the sand, Cecil made a discovery. He said, 'Miss Beer, do you know, I
know what sand is, it's little tiny tiny stones.'"
It may be worth while to notice some things in these notes. First the
pleasure in exploring the new surroundings and then the variety of
delights. Our landscape gardener mentions that "any slope to our grounds
should be welcomed.... For as we leave the level land and flee to the
mountains to spend our vacation, so will a child avoid the street and
seek the gutter and the bank on the unimproved lot to enjoy its
pastime." Our own children have been fortunate enough to have a bank for
their play, and though, unfortunately, extension of buildings has taken
away much of this, we have had abundant opportunity to see the value of
sloping ground. Then there are the discoveries, the feathery grasses,
especially those which were hidden, the ladybirds, that sand is really
"tiny tiny stones"--has every adult noticed that, or is sand "just
sand"?--and the "wonder" that we can see through glass, a wonder
realised by a little girl of four years old. Also we can notice what the
children did not desire. They liked listening to the thrush, but to make
out what the thrush was "saying" was beyond them. They liked gathering
feathery grasses, but to sort these into different kinds gave no
pleasure, though older children would have enjoyed trying to find many
varieties.
Perhaps teachers with a fair amount of experience might have felt like
the beginner who frankly says, "I didn't say anything more because I
didn't know what to say," when Dorothy discovered the wonderfulness of
glass. Perhaps we are silent because the child has gone ahead of us. It
is wonderful, but we have never thought about it. In such cases we must,
as Froebel says, "become a learner with the child" and humbly, with real
sympathy and earnestness, ask, "Is it wonderful, I suppose it is, but I
never thought about it, why do _you_ call it wonderful?" If the child
answers, it is well, if not the teacher can go on thinking aloud,
thinking with the child. "Let's think what other things we can see
through." We can never understand it, we can only reach the fact of
"transparency" as a wonderful property of certain substances and
consider which possess this magic quality. There is water of course, and
there is jelly or gelatine, but these are not hard, they are not stones
as glass seems to be. The child will be pleased too to see a crystal or
a bit of mica, but the main thing is that we should not imagine we have
disposed of the wonder by a mere name with a glib, "Oh, that's just
because it's transparent," but that we realise, and reinforce and
deepen the child's sense of wonderfulness. So teacher and child enter
into the thoughts of Him
CHAPTER X
A WAY TO GOD
As a son can share the aspirations of his father, so man "a thought of
God"
can aspire
From earth's level where blindly creep
Things perfected more or less
To the heaven's height far and steep.
These suggestions are taken for the most part from the _Mother Songs_,
some from _The Education of Man_. Each parent or teacher must use what
seems to her or to him most valuable. Some may from the beginning desire
to teach the child a baby prayer, or at least to let him hear "God bless
you." Others may prefer to wait for a more intelligent stage, perhaps
when the child begins to ask the invariable questions--who made the
flowers, the animals; who made me? If so, we must remember that children
see, and hear, and think, that often in thoughtless ejaculations, or in
those of heartfelt thankfulness, children may hear the name of God; that
a simple story may have something that stirs thought; that churches are
much in evidence; and that the conversation of little playfellows may
take an unexpected turn.
It never does harm for us honestly to confess our own limitations and
our ignorance, and that is better than weak materialistic explanations,
which after all explain nothing. To tell a child that the Great Father
is always grieved when we are unkind or cowardly, always ready to help
us and to put kindness and bravery into our hearts, that we know He has
power to do that if we will let Him, but that His power is beyond our
understanding: to say that He is able to keep us in all danger, and that
even if we are killed we are safe in His keeping, surely that is enough.
He who blessed the children uttered strong words against him who caused
the little ones to stumble.
"From every point, from every object of nature and life there is a way
to God.... The things of nature form a more beautiful ladder between
heaven and earth than that seen by Jacob.... It is decked with flowers,
and angels with children's eyes beckon us toward it." This is true, but
it does not mean that we are always to be trying to make things sacred,
but that we are to realise that all beauty and all knowledge and all
sympathy are already sacred, and that to love such things is to love
something whereby the Creator makes Himself known to us, that to enjoy
them is to enjoy God.
The greatest Teacher of all taught by stories, and when any story
deepens our feelings for human nature and our recognition of the heights
to which it can rise, when it makes us long for faith, courage, and love
to go and do likewise, who shall say that this is not religious
teaching, teaching which helps to deliver us from the bonds that hamper
spiritual ascent.
Many of us will feel with Froebel that the fairy-tale, with its
slumbering premonition of being surrounded by that which is higher and
more "conscious than ourselves,"[25] has its place, and an important
place, in religious development.
The "fairy sense," says Dr. Greville Macdonald, "is innate as the
religious sense itself ... the fairy stories best beloved are those
steeped in meaning--the unfathomable meaning of life ... such stories
teach--even though no lesson was intended--the wisdom of the Book of
Job: wisdom that by this time surely should have made religious teaching
saner, and therefore more acceptable."[26]
Fairies, like angels, may be God's messengers. A child who had heard of
St. Cuthbert as a shepherd boy being carried home from the hillside when
hurt, by a man on a white horse, repeated the story in her own words,
"and he thought it was a fairy of God's sent to help him."
There is, however, nothing the children love more than the Bible story,
the story which shows, so simply, humanity struggling as the children
struggle, failing as the children fail, and believing and trusting as
the children believe, and as we at least strive to do, in the ultimate
victory of Right over Wrong, of Good over Evil. But just because the
stories are often so beautiful and so inspiring, the teacher should have
freedom to deal with them as the spirit moves her.
What experience has taught me in this way has already been passed on to
younger teachers in _Education by Life_, and there seems little more to
add.
It is for us to tell the child what he is, that he, too, like all the
things he loves, is a manifestation of God. "I am a being alive and
conscious upon this earth; a descendant of ancestors who rose by gradual
processes from lower forms of animal life, and with struggle and
suffering became man."[27]
[Footnote 27: _The Substance of Faith Allied with Science_, Sir Oliver
Lodge (Methuen).]
"The colossal remains of shattered mountain chains speak of the greatness
of God; and man is encouraged and lifts himself up by them, feeling
within himself the same spirit and power."[28]
CHAPTER XI
RHYTHM
In his _Mother Songs_, Froebel couples rhythm with harmony of all kinds,
not only musical harmony but harmony of proportion and colour, and in
urging the very early training of "the germs of all this," he gives
perhaps the chief reason for training. "If these germs do not develop
and take shape as independent formations in each individual, they at
least teach how to understand and to recognise those of other people.
This is life-gain enough, it makes one's life richer, richer by the
lives of others."
We can supply good verses for all these if we take pains to search, and
if we eschew ignorant and unpoetic modern doggerel as we eschew poison.
Besides the nursery rhymes, we have Stevenson, with his "Wind,"
"Shadow," and "Swing," Christina Rossetti's "Wrens and Robins," her
"Rainbow Verses" and "Brownie, Brownie, let down your milk, White as
swansdown, smooth as silk." There are many others, and a recent charming
addition to our stock is "Chimneys and Fairies," by Rose Fyleman. One
thing we should not neglect, and that is the child's sense of humour.
For the very young this is probably satisfied by the cow that jumps over
the moon, the dish that runs after the spoon, Jill tumbling after Jack,
and Miss Muffet running away from the spider. But older children much
enjoy nonsense verses by Lewis Carroll or by Lear, and "John Gilpin" is
another favourite.
The mother repeats her rhymes and verses solely to give pleasure, and if
our aim is the deepening of appreciation, there is no reason for leaving
the green and grassy path that Nature has showed to the mother for the
hard and beaten track of "recitation." In our own Kindergarten there
has never been either rote learning or recitation. The older children
learn the words of their songs, but not to a word-perfect stage, because
words and music suggest each other. Except for that we just enjoy our
verses, the children asking for their favourites and getting new ones
sometimes by request sometimes not. Anything not enjoyed is laid aside.
We need variety, but everything must be good of its kind, and verses
about children are seldom for children. Because children love babies,
they love "Where did you come from, baby dear?" but nothing like
Tennyson's "Baby, wait a little longer," and especially nothing of the
"Toddlekins" type has any place in the collection of a self-respecting
child. It is doubtful if Eugene Field's verses are really good enough
for children.
Miss Salt tells her own story in an appendix to Mr. Stewart Macpherson's
_Aural Culture based on Musical Appreciation._
Good music is played and the children listen and move freely in time to
it, sometimes marching or dancing in circles, sometimes quite freely
"expressing" whatever feeling the music calls forth in them. The stress
is laid on listening; if you see a picture you reproduce it, if the
music makes you think of trees or wind, thunder or goblins, you become
what you think of. It is astonishing to see how little children learn in
this way to care for music by Schumann, Mendelssohn, Grieg, Dvor�k,
Brahms, Chopin, and Beethoven. The music is of course selected with
skill, and care is taken that the "expression" shall not make the
children foolishly self-conscious. Emphasis is always placed on
listening, and the children's appreciation is apparent. Such
appreciation must enrich their lives.
CHAPTER XII
But the narration of stories is not the only way in which we can treat
history. Our present Minister of Education says that history teaching
ought to give "discipline in practical reasoning" and "help in forming
judgements," not merely in remembering facts. Indeed he went so far as
to say "eliminate dates and facts" by which, of course, he only meant
that the power of reasoning, the power of forming judgements is of far
more consequence than the mere possession of any quantity of facts and
dates. Training in reasoning, however, must involve training in
verification of facts before pronouncing judgement.
This interest in how human beings have created themselves and their
surroundings ought to be deeply interesting to any and every age. Young
children can reach so little that one hopes the interest aroused will be
lasting and lead to fruitful work later. But it certainly makes a good
foundation for the study of history and geography, if history is treated
as sociology and if geography is recognised as the study of man in his
environment.
Coming now to practical details, in our own work we have followed fairly
closely the suggestions made by Professor Dewey, but everything must
vary from year to year according to the suggestions of the children or
their apparent needs. One extra step we have found necessary, and that
is to spend some time over a desert island or Robinson Crusoe stage.
Some children can do without it, but all enjoy it, and the duller
children find it difficult to imagine a time when "you could buy it in
a shop" does not fit all difficulties. They can easily grasp the idea of
sailing away to a land "where no man had ever been before," and playing
at desert island has always been a joy.
The starting-points for primitive life have been various; sometimes the
work has found its beginning in chance conversation, as when a child
asked, "Are men animals?" and the class took to the suggestion that man
meant thinking animal, and began to consider what he had thought. Often
after Robinson Crusoe there has been a direct question, "How did
Robinson Crusoe know how to make his things; had any one taught him? Who
made the things he had seen; who made the very first and how did he
know?" One answer invariably comes, "God taught them," which can be met
by saying this is true, but that God "teaches" by putting things into
the world and giving men power to think. This leads to a discussion
about things natural, "what God makes" and what man makes, which is
sometimes illuminating on the limited conceptions of town children.
Years ago we named primitive man "the Long-Ago People," and the title
has seemed to give satisfaction, though once we had the suggestion of
"Old-Time Men."
We always start with the need for food, and the children suggest all the
wild fruits they know, often leaving out nuts till asked if there is
anything that can be stored for winter. Roots are not always given, but
buds of trees is a frequent answer. Children in the country ought to
explore and to dig, and in our own playground we find at least wild
barley, blackberries of a sort, cherries, hard pears, almonds and cherry
gum. Killing animals for food is suggested, and the children have to be
told that the animals were fierce and to realise that in these times man
was hunted, not hunter. Little heads are quite ready to tackle the
problem of defence and attack. They could throw stones, use sticks that
the wind blew down, pull up a young tree, or "a lot of people could
hang on to a branch and get it down." When one child suggested finding a
dead animal and using it for food, some were disgusted, but a little
girl said, "I don't suppose they would mind, they wouldn't be very
particular."
Then may come the question of safety and tree-climbing, and how to
manage with the babies. Children generally know that tiny babies can
hold very tight, and have various ideas for the mother. How to keep the
baby from falling brings the idea of twisting in extra branches, which
is recognised as a cradle in the tree, and the children delight in this
as a meaning for "Rock-a-bye, baby, in the tree-top." The possibility of
tree-shelters comes in, and various experiments are made, sometimes in
miniature, sometimes in the garden. Out of this comes the discussion of
clothes. Animals' skins is an invariable suggestion, though all children
do not realise that what they call "fur" means skin.
It may be stated here that we are not very rigid about periods or
climates, and that our long-ago people are of a generalised type. Our
business is not to supply correct information on anthropological
questions, but to call forth thought and originality, to present
opportunities for closer observation than was ever evoked by observation
lessons, and for experiments full of meaning and full of zest. Naturally
we do not despise correct information, but these children are very young
and all this work is tentative. We are never dogmatic, it is all "Do you
think they might have ..." or "Well, I know what I should have done; I
should have ..." and the teacher's reply is usually "Suppose we try."
Children are apt of course to make startling remarks, but it is only the
teacher who is startled by: "Was all this before God's birthday?" "I
don't think God had learned to be very clever then." It is a curious
fact, but orthodox opinion has only twice in the course of many years
brought up Adam and Eve. Probably this is because we never talk about
the first man, but about how things were discovered. The first time the
question did come up Miss Payne was taking the subject, and she
suggested that Adam and Eve were never in this country, which disposed
of difficulties so well that I gave the same answer the only time I ever
had to deal with the question.
When we come to the problem of fire, we always use parts of Miss Dopp's
story of _The Tree-Dwellers_. If the children are asked if they ever
heard of fire that comes by itself, or of things being burned by fire
that no human being had anything to do with, one or two are sure to
suggest lightning. They will tell that lightning sometimes sets trees on
fire, that thunderstorms generally come after hot dry weather, and that
if lightning struck a tree with dry stuff about the fire would spread,
and the long-ago people would run away. A question from the teacher as
to what these people might think about it may bring the suggestion of a
monster; if not, one only has to say that it must have seemed as if it
was eating the trees to get "They would think it was a dreadful animal."
Then the story can be told of how the boy called Bodo stopped to look
and saw the monster grow smaller, so he went closer, fed it on wood, and
liked to feel its warm breath after the heavy rain that follows
thunder--why had the monster grown smaller?--found that no animal would
come near it and so on. We never tell of the "fire country," though
sometimes the children read the book for themselves a little later.
What made these long-ago people think of using their fire to cook food?
Our children have suggested that a bit of raw meat fell into the fire by
accident, and we have also worked it out in this way. We were pretending
to warm ourselves by the fire, and I said my frozen meat was so cold
that it hurt my teeth. "Hold it to the fire then." We burned our
fingers, and sticks were suggested, but we sucked the burnt fingers, and
I said, "it tastes good," and the children shouted with glee "Because
the meat's roasted really." Then something was supposed to drop, and the
cry was "Gravy! catch it in a shell, dip your finger in and let your
baby suck it." A small shell was suggested, and the boy who said "And
put a stick in for a handle" was dubbed "the spoon-maker." At that time
we were earning names for ourselves by suggestions; we started with Fair
Hair, Curly Hair, Big Teeth, Long Legs, and arrived at Quick Runner,
Climber, and even Thinker.
Experiments depend upon circumstances and upon the age of the children.
A thick and tiny basin put into a hot part of an ordinary fire does
harden and hold water to a certain extent even without glazing. But
elaborate baking may also be done.
CHAPTER XIII
Writing and reading have no place in the actual Kindergarten, much less
arithmetic. The stories are told to the child; drawing, modelling and
such-like will express all he wants to express in any permanent form,
and speech, as Froebel says, is "the element in which he lives." His
counting is of the simplest, and the main thing is to see that he does
not merely repeat a series while he handles material, but that the
series corresponds with the objects. Even this can be left alone if it
seems to annoy the little one. In the school he is on a very different
level, he has attained to the abstract, he can use signs: he can express
thoughts which he could not draw, and can communicate with those who are
absent. He can read any letter received and he is no longer dependent on
grown-ups for stories. He can count his own money and can get correct
change in small transactions, and he can probably do a variety of sums
which are of no use to him at all.
Between these two comes what Froebel called the Transition or Connecting
Class, in which the child learns the meaning of the signs which stand
for speech, and those which make calculation less arduous for weak
memories.
Much has been written as to when and how children are to be taught to
read. Some great authorities would put it off till eight or even ten.
Stanley Hall says between six and eight, while Dr. Montessori teaches
children of five and even of four. Froebel would have supported Stanley
Hall and would wait till the age of six. The strongest reason for
keeping children back from books is a physiological one. In the
_Psychology and Physiology of Reading_[30] strong arguments are adduced
against early reading as very injurious to eyesight, so it is surprising
that Dr. Montessori begins so soon. It has been said that her children
only learn to write, not to read, but it is to be supposed that they can
read what they write, and therefore can read other material.
If we agree not to begin until six years old, the next question is the
method. The alphabetic, whereby children were taught the letter names
and then memorised the spelling of each single word, has no supporters.
But controversy still goes on as to whether children shall begin with
word wholes or with the phonic sounds. It is not a matter of vital
importance, for the children who begin with words come to phonics later,
and so far as English is concerned, the children who begin with phonics
cannot go far without meeting irregularities, unless indeed they are
limited to books like those of Miss Dale.
The phonic method dates back to about 1530. The variety used in the
Pestalozzi-Froebel House is said to have originated with Jacotot
(1780-1840). It is called the "Observing-Speaking-Writing and Reading
Method." Froebel's own adaptation was simpler; it was his principle to
begin with a desire on the part of the child, and he gives his method in
story form, "How Lina learned to write and read." Lina is six, she has
left the Kindergarten and is presently to attend the Primary School. She
notices with what pleasure her father, perhaps a somewhat exceptional
parent, receives and answers letters. She desires to write and her
mother makes her say her own name carefully, noticing first the "open"
or vowel sounds and then by noting the position of her tongue she finds
the closed sounds. As she hears the sound she is shown how to make it.
Her father leaves home at the right moment, Lina writes to him, receives
and is able to read his answer, printed like her own in Roman capitals.
He sends her a picture book and she is helped to see how the letters
resemble those she has learned and the reading is accomplished.
Stanley Hall holds that it is best to combine methods, and probably most
of us do this. "The growing agreement" is, he says, "that there is no
one and only orthodox way of teaching and learning this greatest and
hardest of all the arts, in which ear, mouth, eye and hand must each in
turn train the others to automatic perfection, in ways hard and easy, by
devices old and new, mechanically and consciously, actively and
passively ... this is a great gain and seems now secure. While a good
pedagogic method is one of the most economic--both of labour and of
money--of all inventions, we should never forget that the brightest
children, and indeed most children, if taught individually or at home,
need but very few refinements of method. Idiots, as Mr. Seguin first
showed, need and profit greatly by very elaborated methods in learning
how to walk, feed and dress themselves, which would only retard a normal
child. Above all it should be borne in mind that the stated use of any
method does not preclude the incidental use of any and perhaps of _all_
others."
It is not only how children learn to read that is important: even more
so is what they read. Much unintelligent reading in later life is due to
the reading primer in which there was nothing to understand. Children
should read books, as adults do, to get something out of them. The time
often wasted in teaching reading too soon would be far better employed
in cultivating a taste for good reading by telling or reading to the
children good stories and verses.[32]
There are a few little children who are really fond of number work.
There are not many of them, and they would probably learn more if they
were left to themselves. There are even a few mathematical geniuses who
hardly want teaching, but who are worthy of being taught by a Professor
of Mathematics, always supposing that he is worthy of them. But the
majority of children would probably be farther advanced at ten or twelve
if they had no teaching till they were seven. They ought to learn
through actual number games, through keeping score for other games, and
through any kind of calculation that is needed for construction or in
real life.
There are but few true number games, but dominoes and card games
introduce the number groups. In "Old maid" the children pair the groups
and so learn to recognise them; in dominoes they use this knowledge,
while "Snap" involves quick recognition. Any one can make up a game in
which scoring is necessary. Ninepins or skittles is a number game, and
one can score by using number groups, or by fetching counters, shells,
beads, etc., as reminders. The number groups are important; they form
what Miss Punnett calls "a scheme" for those who have no great
visualising power, and they combine the smallest groups into large ones.
It ought to be remembered that the repetition of a group is an easier
thing to deal with than the combination of two groups, that is, six is
a name for two threes and eight for two fours, but five and seven have
not so definite a meaning.[33]
[Footnote 33: This very morning a child cutting out brown paper pennies
for a shop said, 'Look! there are two sixes; that _would_ be a big
number!']
When the names have a meaning the children will want signs, i.e.
figures. Clock figures (Roman) can be used first as simplest, showing
the closed fingers and the thumb for V; the only difficulty is IX. The
Arabic figures can be made by drawing round the number groups, or by
laying out their shapes in little sticks. 5 and 8 show very plainly how
to arrange five and eight sticks; for two and three they are placed
horizontally, the curves merely joining the lines.
The decimal notation is a great thing to learn, how great any one will
discover who will take the trouble to work a simple addition sum,
involving hundreds, in Roman figures. Children are always taught the
number of the house they live in, which makes a starting-point. If, for
instance, 35 is compared with XXXV a meaning is given to the 3.
Many teachers make formal sums of numbers which could quite well be
added without any writing at all. By using any kind of material by which
ten can be made plain as a higher unit--bundles of sticks or tickets,
Sonnenschein's apparatus, Miss Punnett's number scheme, or the new
Montessori apparatus with its chains of beads: the material used is of
no great consequence--children should be able to deal as easily with
tens as with ones, and there is no need for little formal sums which
have no meaning.
So we can end where we began, by letting Froebel once more define the
Kindergarten.
"Not the training of the memory, not learning by rote, not familiarity
with the appearances of things, but culture by means of action,
realities and life itself, bring a blessing upon the individual, and
thereby a blessing upon the whole community; since each one, be he the
highest or the humblest, is a member of the community."
PART II
CHAPTER XIV
The instructions given by Owen to the man and the women he chose for
his Infant School may serve to show his general aim; the babies under
their care were above all to be happy, to lead a natural life, outdoor
or indoor as weather permitted; learning their surroundings, playing,
singing, dancing, "not annoyed with books," not shadowed by the needs of
the upper school, but living the life their age demanded. In the light
of the 1918 Education Bill this seems almost prophetic.
Very soon the experiment became known: persons with the stamp of
authority came to see it, and even official hearts were moved by the
reality of the children's happiness and their consequent development.
The visitors felt, rather than knew, that the thing was right.
Arrangements were made to establish similar institutions in London, and
after one or two experiments, a permanent one was founded which was
under the control of a man named Wilderspin.
The first twenty years of his experience convinced Froebel that the
neglect or mismanagement of the earliest years of a child's life
rendered useless all that was done later. What came to Owen as an
inspiration grew in Froebel to be a reasoned truth, and like Owen he put
it into practice. In 1837 the little Kindergarten at Blankenburg was
begun, with the village children as pupils; the beautiful surroundings
of forest-covered hills and green slopes made a very different
background from the bleak little Lanarkshire village, overshadowed by
the factory, where Owen's school stood, but the spirit was the same; the
children were in surroundings suitable for their growth, and the very
name of Kindergarten does more to make Froebel's aim clear than any
explanation. He lived to see other Kindergartens established in
different parts of Thuringia, and about the middle of the nineteenth
century some of his teachers came to England, and did similar work in
London, Croydon and Manchester. The private Kindergarten became an
established thing, and educationalists came to understand something of
its meaning.
In 1870 the London School Board suggested that the Kindergarten system
should be introduced into their Infant Schools, and in doing so they
were unconsciously the factors in bringing together the work initiated
by Owen and by Froebel. The Infant School of Wilderspin, already briefly
described, was almost a dead thing, with its galleries and its
mechanical prodigies, its object-lessons and its theology; now it was
breathed upon by the spirit of the man who said: "Play is the highest
phase of child development, of human development at this period: for it
is the spontaneous representation of the inner, from inner necessity and
impulse." "Play is the purest, most spiritual activity of man." "The
plays of childhood are the germinal leaves of all later life." "If the
child is injured at this period, if the germinal leaves of the future
tree of his life are marred at this time, he will only with the
greatest difficulty and the utmost effort grow into strong manhood."
The change from the early 'eighties till now is difficult to describe,
because it is a growth of spirit, a gradual change of values, rather
than a change in outward form; there has been no definite throwing off,
and no definite adoption, of any one system or theory; but the
difference between the best Infant Schools of 1880 and the best Infant
Schools of to-day is chiefly a difference in outlook. The older schools
aimed at copying a method, while the schools of to-day are more
concerned with realising the spirit.
Perhaps the most significant and most important of these was the effect
of the child-study movement on the formal and external side of
Kindergarten work. It is first of all to America that we owe this, to
the pioneer Stanley Hall, and more especially here to Mr. Earl Barnes.
Very slowly, but surely, it was evident to the more enlightened teachers
that children had their own way of learning and doing, and the
adult-imposed system meant working against nature. For the logical
method of presenting material from the simple to the complex, from the
known to the unknown, from the concrete to the abstract, was substituted
the psychological method of watching the children's way of learning and
developing. Teachers found that what they considered to be "the simple"
was not the simple to children; what they took to be "the known" was the
unfamiliar to children. For instance, the "simple" in geography, in the
adult sense, was the definition of an island, with which most of us
began that study, and in geometry it was the point. To children of the
ordinary type, both are far-away ideas, and not related to everyday
experiences; "the known" in arithmetic, for example, was to teachers the
previous lesson, quite regardless of the fact that arithmetic enters
into many problems of life outside school. The life in school and the
life outside school were, in these early days of infant teaching, two
separate things, and only occasionally did a teacher stoop to take an
example from everyday life. A little girl in one of the poorest schools
brought her baby to show her teacher, and proudly displayed the baby's
powers of speech--"Say a pint of 'alf-an-'alf for teacher," said the
little girl to the baby by way of encouragement to both. This is the
kind of rude awakening teachers get, from time to time, when they
realise how much of the real child eludes them. Psychology has made it
clear that life is a unity and must be so regarded.
Part of this child-study movement has resulted in the slow but sure
death of formalism: large classes, material results, and a lack of
psychology made formalism the path of least resistance. Painting became
"blobbing," constructive work was interpreted as "courses" of paper
folding, cutting, tearing; books of these courses were published with
minute directions for a graduated sequence. The aim was obedient
imitation on the part of the child, and the imagined virtues accruing to
him in consequence were good habits, patience, accuracy and technical
skill. Self-expression and creativeness were still only theories.
About 1890 or thereabouts the Nature Study movement swept over the
schools, and "nature specimens" then became the material for sense
training: as far as possible each child had a specimen, and by the
minute examination of these, stimulated their senses and stifled their
appreciation of all that was beautiful.
Question and answer still dominated the activity; the poor little
withered snowdrop took the place of the dead camphor or leather. But
underlying all the paralysing organisation the truth was slowly growing,
and the children were being brought nearer to real things.
A WEEK'S PROGRAMME
Underneath it all the truth was growing, namely, the need of making
associations and so unifying the children's lines. But the process of
finding the truth was slow and cumbersome.
A fourth phase of the early Infant School was the strong belief of both
teachers and inspectors in uniformity of work and of results. It is
difficult to disentangle this from the paralysing influences of payment
by results and large classes: it was probably the teachers' unconscious
expression of the instinct of self-preservation, when working against
the heaviest odds. But it was constantly evident to the teacher that any
attempt on a child's part to be an individual, either in work or in
conduct, had to be arrested: and the theory of individual development
was regarded as so Utopian that the idea itself was lost. Goodness was
synonymous with uniform obedience and silence; naughtiness with
individuality, spontaneity and desire to investigate. A frequently-heard
admonition on the part of the teacher was, "Teacher didn't tell you to
do it that way--that's a naughty way"; but such an attitude of mind was
doubtless generated by the report of the inspector when he commended a
class by saying: "The work of the class showed a satisfactory
uniformity."
All these phases stand for both progress and arrest. The average person
is readier to accept methods than investigate principles; but we must
recognise that all struggles and searchings after truth have made the
road of progress shorter for us by many a mile.
Perhaps the chief cause of stumbling lay in the fact that there was no
clearly realised aim or policy except that of material results. There
were many fine-sounding principles in the air, but they were unrelated
to each other; and the conditions of teaching were likely to crush the
finest endeavours, and to make impossible a teaching that could be
called educative.
CHAPTER XV
As a rule the windows are too high for the children to see from, and
the lower part is generally frosted. In a new school which had a view up
one of the loveliest valleys in Great Britain, the windows were of this
description; the head of the school explained that it was a precaution
in case the children might see what was outside; in other words, they
might make the mistake of seeing a real river valley instead of
listening to a description of it.
Of late years the apparatus has improved, though there is still much to
be done in this direction. Instead of the original tiny boxes of gifts
we have frequently real nursery bricks of a larger and more varied
character, and many other nursery toys. One of the best signs of a
progressive policy is that large numbers of _little_ toys have taken the
place of the big expensive ones that only an occasional child could use.
It is a pity that the use of toys comes to so sudden an end, and that
learning by this method does not follow the babies after they have
officially ceased to be babies, as is the custom in real life.
One of the most striking changes for the better is the evidence of care
of the children's health, of which some of the external signs are
doctor, nurse and care committee. A sense of responsibility in this
respect is gradually growing in the schools; a fair number provide for
sleep, a few try to train the children to eat lunch slowly and
carefully, and some try to arrange for milk or cod-liver oil in the case
of very delicate children. Though these instances are very much in the
minority, they represent a change of spirit. This is one of the striking
characteristics of the new Education Bill. A legacy from the old
formalism lies in the fact that every room has a highly organised
time-table, except perhaps in the Babies' Room, where the children's
actual needs are sometimes considered first. The morning in most classes
is occupied with Scripture, Reading, Arithmetic, Writing, and some less
formal work, such as Nature lesson or Recitation; some form of Physical
Exercise is always taken. The afternoons are mostly devoted to Games,
Stories, Handwork and Singing: this order is not universal, but the
general principle holds, of taking the more difficult and formal
subjects in the morning. In the Babies' Room some preparation for
reading is still too frequent. The lessons are short and the order
varied, but in one single morning or afternoon there is a bewildering
number of changes. Some years ago the unfortunate principle was laid
down in the Code, that fifteen minutes was sufficient time for a lesson
in an Infant School, and though this is not strictly followed the
lessons are short and numerous, giving an unsettled character to the
work; children appear to be swung at a moment's notice from topic to
topic without an apparent link or reason: for example, the day's work
may begin with the story of a little boy sent by train to the country,
settled at a farm and taken out to see the _cow_ and the _sow_: soon
this is found to be a reading lesson on words ending in "ow," but after
a short time the whole class is told quite suddenly, that one shilling
is to be spent at a shop in town, and while they are still interested in
calculating the change, paints are distributed, and the children are
painting the bluebell. The whole day is apt to be of this broken
character, which certainly does not make for training in mental
concentration, or for a realisation of the unity of life. Some teachers
still aim at correlation, but in a rather half-hearted way: others have
entirely discarded it because of its strained applications, but nothing
very definite has taken its place.
This poison of the promotion and uniformity test works down through the
Infant School: it can be seen when the babies are diverted from their
natural activities to learn reading, or when they are "examined": it can
be seen when a teacher yields up her "bright" children to fill a few
empty desks, it can be seen in the grind at reading and formal
arithmetic of the children under six, when weary and useless hours are
spent in working against nature, and precious time is wasted that will
never come back. Yet we _say_ we believe that "Children have their youth
that they may play," and that "Play is the purest, most spiritual
activity of man at this stage" [childhood].
The lack of any clear aim shows itself in the fluid nature of the term
"results"; to some teachers it signifies readiness for promotion, or a
piece of work that presents a satisfactory external appearance, such as
good writing, neat handwork, an orderly game, fluent reading. To others
it means something deeper, which they discover in some chance remark of
a child's that marks the growth of the spirit, or the awakening of the
interest of a child whose development is late, or the quickened power of
a child to express; or evidence of independent thought and the power to
use it, in some piece of handwork, or appreciation of music or
literature. According to the meaning attached to the term "results" so
the method of the teacher must vary; but one gets the general impression
that in this respect matters are in a transitional state; the first kind
of teacher is always a little uncertain of her ground and a little
fearful that she is not quite "up-to-date," while the second class of
teacher is sometimes a little timid, and not quite sure that she is
prepared to account for the rather subtle and intangible outcome of her
work.
Taking a general view of the present school, one gets the impression of
a constant change of activity on the part of the children, but very
little change of position, a good deal of provision for general class
interest, but little for individual interest; of less demand than
formerly for uniformity of results, but the existence of a good deal of
uniformity of method, arresting the teacher's own initiative; of very
constant teaching on the part of the teacher and a good deal of
listening and oral expression on the part of the children, of many
lessons and little independent individual work. Below all this there is
evident a very friendly relationship between the teacher and the
children, a good deal of personal knowledge of the children on the part
of the teacher, and a good deal of affection on both sides. There is
less fear and more love than in the earlier days, less government and
more training, less restraint and more freedom. And the children are
greatly attached to their school.
We all believe that we have an aim and a high aim before us: it has been
variously expressed by past educationalists, but in the main they all
agree that the aim of education is conduct.
The next question is that of the best method of gaining this actual
experience. The child is unaware that he is laying foundations, he is
only vaguely conscious that he finds great pleasure in certain
activities, and that something impels him in certain directions. He
realises no definite future, he is content with the present; he cannot
work for a purpose other than the pleasure of the moment; without this
stimulus concentration is impossible. In the activities of this stage he
probably assimilates more actual matter than at any other period of his
life, and it is the same with his acquirements of skill. In happy
unconsciousness he gains knowledge of his own body and of its power, of
the external world, of his mother tongue and of his relations to other
people: he makes mistakes and commits faults, but these do not
necessarily cripple or incriminate him. He is not considered a social
outcast because he once kicked or bit, or because he threw his milk over
the table; he learns to balance and adjust his muscles on a seesaw, when
a fall on soft grass is a matter of little importance, and this is
better than waiting till he is compelled hastily to cross a river on a
narrow plank. It is all a kind of joyous rehearsal of life which we call
Play. We can force a child to passivity, to formal repetitions of
second-hand knowledge, to the acquisition of that for which he has no
apparent need, but we can never _educate_ him by these things. "Children
do not play because they are young, they have their youth that they may
play," as surely as they have their legs that they may walk.
_The second principle is therefore that the method of gaining experience
lies through Play, and that by this road we can best reach work_.
The third principle is the nature of the experience that a child seeks
to gain--the life he desires to live. How can we he sure that the
surroundings we provide and the activities we encourage are in accord
with children's needs?
There are other things that he grasps at more vaguely and later; he is
dimly aware that people have lived before, and he is less dimly aware
that people live in places different from his own surroundings. He
realises that some of the stories, such as the fairy stories, are true
in one sense, a sense that responds to something within himself; that
some are true in another more material, and external sense, one
concerned with things that really happen. He hears of "black men," and
of "ships that carry people across the sea," and of "things that come
back in those ships."
He is interested in the immaterial world suggested by the mysteries of
woods and gardens, he has a dim conception that there is some life
beyond the visible, he feels a power behind life and he reveals this in
his early questions. He is keenly interested in questions of birth and
death, and sometimes comes into close contact with them. He feels that
other wonders must be accounted for--the snow, thunder and lightning,
the colours of summer, the changeful sea. At first the world of fairy
lore may satisfy him, later comes the life of the undying spirit, but
the two are continuous. He may attend "religious observances," and these
may help or they may hinder.
Such are the most usual sides of life sought by the ordinary child, and
on such must we base the surroundings we provide for our children in
school, and the aspects of life to which we introduce them, commonly
called subjects of the curriculum.
The world that the free child chooses represents every side of life that
he is ready to assimilate, and his freedom must be intellectual,
emotional and moral freedom. In the school with the rigidly organised
time-table, where the remarks of the children provoke the constantly
repeated reproach: "We are not talking of that just now," where the
apparatus is formal and the method of using it prescribed, where home
life and street life are ignored, where there are neither garden nor
picture books, where childish questions are passed over or hastily
answered, where the room is full of desks and the normal attitude is
sitting, where the teacher is teaching more often than the children are
doing, there is no intellectual freedom.
CHAPTER XVII
The world of the Nursery School child probably requires the most careful
thought in this respect: a large room with sunlight and air, low clear
windows, a door leading to a garden and playground, low cupboards full
of toys, low-hung pictures, light chairs and tables that can be pushed
into a corner, stretcher beds equally disposable, a dresser with pretty
utensils for food; these are the chief requirements for satisfying
physical needs, apparent in the actual room. Physical habits will be
considered later, under another heading.
Thus the purely physical side of the children is provided for, the side
that they are, if healthy, quite unconscious of; what else does
experience demand at this stage?
Roughly classified, the raw experience of this stage may be divided into
the experience of the natural world of living things, the world of
inanimate things, and the social world. For the natural world there
should be the garden outside, with its trees, grass and flower beds;
with its dovecot and rabbit hutch, and possibly a cat sunning herself on
its paths; inside there will be plants and flowers to care for; the
elements, especially water, earth and air, are very dear to a young
child, and it is quite possible to satisfy his cravings with a large
sand-heap of _dry_ and _wet_ sand; a large flat bath for sailing boats
and testing the theory of sinking and floating; a bin of clay; a pair of
bellows and several fans to set the air in motion. There is always the
fire to gaze at on the right side of the fire-guard, and appreciation of
the beauty of this element should be encouraged.
The world of inanimate things includes most of the toys that stimulate
activity and give ideas. The chief that should be found in the
cupboards, round the walls, or scattered about the room, are bricks of
all sizes and shapes, skittles, balls and bats or rackets, hoops, reins,
spades and other garden tools; pails and patty pans for the sand-heap;
pipes for bubbles, shells, fir-cones, buttons, acorns, and any
collection of small articles for handling; all kinds of vehicles that
can be pushed, such as carts, barrows, prams, engines; drums and other
musical instruments; materials for construction and expression, such as
chalks, boards, paints and paper.
For experiences of the social world, which is not very real at this
individualistic period, come the dolls and doll's house, horses and
stables, tea-things, cooking utensils, Noah's ark, scales for a shop,
boats, soldiers and forts: a very important item in this connection is
the collection of picture-books: they must be chosen with the greatest
care, and only pictures of such merit as those of Caldecott, Leslie
Brooke and Jessie Wilcox Smith should be selected. Pictures form one of
the richest sources of experience at this stage, as indeed at any stage
of life, and truth, beauty and suggestiveness must be their chief
factors.
The toys should be above all things durable, and if possible washable.
Broken and dirty toys make immoral children.
In the Transition Classes and Junior School the furniture and apparatus
can be to a great extent very much the same, their difference lying
chiefly in degree. It is a pity to bring the age of toys to an abrupt
conclusion; in real life the older children still borrow the toys of the
younger ones while there are some definitely their own: such are, jigsaw
and other puzzles, dominoes, articles for dramatic representation,
playing cards, toys for games of physical skill, such as tops, kites,
skipping ropes, etc. Such prepared constructive materials as
meccano--and a great mass of raw material for construction, generally
termed "waste." There should be a series of boxes or shelves where such
waste products of the home, or of the woods, or of the seashore, or of
the shop, might be stored in some classified order: the collective
instinct is stronger than the more civilised habit of orderliness: here
is an opportunity for developing a habit from an instinct. There should
also be materials for expression, such as clay, paper, chalk, pencil,
paints, weaving materials, cardboard, and scenery materials; and such
tools as scissors, cardboard knives, needlework tools, paste brushes,
and others that may be necessary and suitable. The rooms should be large
and suitable for much moving about: the most usual conditions should be
a scattered class and not a seated listening class. This means light
chairs and tables or benches where handwork can be done; low cupboards
and lockers so that each child can get at his own things; broad
window-sills for plants and flowers and a bookcase for reading and
picture books. Here again good picture-books are as essential as, even
more essential than, readers in the Transition Class. They will be a
little more advanced than in the Nursery School, and will be of the type
of the Pied Piper illustrated, or pictures of children of other lands
and times. Some of Rackham's, of Harold Copping's, of the publications
by Black in _Peeps at Many Lands_, are suitable for this stage. Readers
should be chosen for their literary value from the recognised children's
classics, such as the Peter Rabbit type, _Alice in Wonderland,
Water-Babies,_ and not made up for the sake of reading practice.
The pictures on the walls should be hung at the right eye-level, and the
windows low enough for looking at the outside world--whatever it may be.
The teacher's desk should be in a corner, not in the central part of the
room, for she must remember that the children are still in the main
seeking experience, not listening to the experience of another. They
should have access to the garden and playground, and all the incitements
to activity should be there--similar to those of the Nursery School, or
those provided by the London County Council in parks. The bare
wilderness of playground now so familiar, where there is neither time
nor opportunity for children to be other than primitive savages, does
not represent the outside world of beauty and of adventure.
The lower classes of Junior School should differ very little in their
miniature world. Life is still activity to the child of eight, and
consequently should contain no immovable furniture. There will be more
books, and the children may be in their seats for longer periods; the
atmosphere of guided but still spontaneous work is more definite, but
the aim in choice of both furniture and apparatus is still the gaining
of experience of life, by direct contact in the main. Such is the
Requisition Sheet to be presented to the Stores Superintendent of the
Local Education Authority in the future, with an explanatory note
stating that in a general way what is actually required is the world in
miniature!
CHAPTER XVIII
Play is marked off from work chiefly by the absence of any outside
pressure, and pleasure in the activity is the characteristic of play
pure and simple: if a child has forced upon him a hint of any ulterior
motive that may be in the mind of his teacher, the pleasure is spoilt
for him and the intrinsic value of the play is lost. In bringing
children into school during their play period, probably the most
important formative period of their lives, and in utilising their play
consciously, we are interfering with one of their most precious
possessions when they are still too helpless to resent it directly. Too
many of us make play a means of concealing the wholesome but unwelcome
morsel of information in jam, and we try to force it on the children
prematurely and surreptitiously, but Nature generally defeats us. The
only sound thing to do is to _play the game_ for all it is worth, and
recognise that in doing so education will look after itself. To
understand the nature of play, and to have the courage to follow it, is
the business of every teacher of young children. The Nursery School,
especially if it consists chiefly of children under five, presents at
first very hard problems to the teacher; however strong her belief in
play may be, it receives severe tests. So much of the play at first
seems to be aimless running and shouting, or throwing about of toys and
breaking them if possible, so much quarrelling and fighting and weeping
seem involved with any attempts at social life on the part of the
children; there seems very little desire to co-operate, and very little
desire to construct; as a rule, a child roams from one thing to another
with apparently only a fleeting attempt to play with it; yet on the
other hand, to make the problem more baffling, a child will spend a
whole morning at one thing: quite lately one child announced that he
meant to play with water all day, and he did; another never left the
sand-heap, and apparently repeated the same kind of activity during a
complete morning; visitors said in a rather disappointed tone, "they
just play all the time by themselves." One teacher brought out an
attractive picture and when a group of children gathered round it she
proceeded to tell the story; they listened politely for a few minutes,
and then the group gradually melted away; they were not ready for
concentrated effort. If those children had been in the ordinary Baby
Room of a school they would have been quite docile, sitting in their
places apparently listening to the story, amiably "using" their bricks
or other materials according to the teacher's directions, but they would
not, in the real sense, have been playing. This is an example of the
need for both principle and courage.
As he develops a child learns much about life in his care of the garden,
about language in his games, about human conduct from stories; but he
does these things because he wants to do them, and because there is a
play need behind it all, which for him is a life need; in order to build
a straight wall he must classify his bricks, in order to be a real
shopman he must know his weights, in order to be a good workman he must
measure his paper; all the ideas gained from these things come to him
_along with sense activity_; they are associated with the needs and
interests of daily life; and because of this he puts into the activity
all the effort of which he is capable, or as Dewey has expressed it,
"the maximum of consciousness" into the experience which is his play.
This is real sense training, differing in this respect from the training
given by the Montessori material, which has no appeal to life interest,
aims at exercising the senses separately, and discourages _play_ with
the apparatus. It is activity without a body, practice without an end,
and nothing develops from it of a constructive or expressive nature.
In the nursery class therefore our curriculum is life, our apparatus all
that a child's world includes, and our method the one of joyful
investigation, by means of which ideas and skill are being acquired. The
teacher is player in chief, ready to suggest, co-operate, supply
information, lead or follow as circumstances demand: responsibility must
still belong to the children, for while most of them know quite
naturally how to play, there are many who will never get beyond a rather
narrow limit, through lack of experience or of initiative.
It is quite safe to let experience take its chance through play, but
there are certain things that must be dealt with quite definitely, when
the teacher is not there as a playmate, but as something more in the
capacity of a mother. It is impossible to train all the habits necessary
at this time, through the spontaneous play, although incidentally many
will be greatly helped and made significant by it. If the children come
from poor homes where speech is imperfect, probably mere imitation of
the teacher, which is the chief factor in ordinary language training,
will be insufficient. It will be necessary to invent ways, chiefly
games, by which the vocal organs may be used; this may be considered
play, but it is more artificial and less spontaneous than the informal
activity already described. It is well to be clear as to the kind of
exercises best suited to make the vocal organs supple, and then to make
these the basis of a game: for example, little children constantly
imitate the cries of ordinary life; town children could dramatise a
railway station where the sounds produced by engines and by porters give
a valuable training; they could imitate street cries, the sound of the
wind, of motor hooters, sirens, or of church bells. Country children
could use the sounds of the farm-yard, the birds, or the wind. In the
recognition of sound, which is as necessary as its production, such a
guessing game could be taught as "I sent my son to be a grocer and the
first thing he sold began with _s_ and ended with _p_," using the
_sounds_, not names of the letters. For the acquisition of a vocabulary,
such a game as the Family Coach might be played and turned into many
other vehicles or objects about which many stories could be told. All
the time the game must be played with the same fidelity to the spirit of
play as previously, but the introduction must be recognised as more
artificial and forced, and this can be justified because so many
children are not normal with regard to speech, and only where this is
the case should language training be forced upon them. Habits of
courtesy, of behaviour at table, of position, of dressing and
undressing, of washing hands and brushing teeth, and many others, must
all be _taught_, but taught at the time when the need comes. Occasions
will certainly occur during play, but the chances of repetition are not
sufficient to count on.
Thus we summarise the chief business of the Nursery School teacher when
we say that it is concerned chiefly with habits and play and right
surroundings.
Play in the Transition Class is less informal. After the age of six
certain ambitions grow and must be satisfied. The aspects of life are
more separated, and concentration on individual ones is commoner; this
means more separation into subjects, and thus a child is more willing to
be organised, and to have his day to _some_ extent arranged for him.
While in the nursery class only what was absolutely necessary was fixed,
in the Transition Class it is convenient to fix rather more, for the
sake of establishing certain regular habits, and because it is necessary
to give the freshest hours to the work that requires most concentration.
We must remember, however, that it _is_ a transition class, and not set
up a completely fashioned time-table for the whole day. Reading and
arithmetic must be acquired both as knowledge and skill, the mother
tongue requires definite practice, there must be a time for physical
activity, and living things must not be attended to spasmodically.
Therefore it seems best that these things be taken in the morning hours,
while the afternoon is still a time for free choice of activity.
The following is a plan for the Transition Class, showing the bridge
between absolute freedom and a fully organised time-table--
MORNING. AFTERNOON.
It does not hold in the informal incidental sense of the Nursery School:
there are periods in the Transition Class when the children know that
they are working for a definite purpose which is not direct play--as in
reading; and there are times when they are dissatisfied with their
performances of skill and ask to be shown a better way, and voluntarily
practise to secure the end, as in handwork, arithmetic and some kinds of
physical games. The remainder is probably still pursued for its own
sake. How then can this play spirit be maintained side by side with
work?
The training of the mother tongue can be made very effective by means
of games: in the days when children's parties were simple, and family
life was united, language games in the long dark evenings gave to many a
grip of words and expressions. Children learnt to describe accurately,
to be very fastidious in choice of words, to ask direct questions, to
give verbal form to thought, all through the stress of such games--Man
and his Shadow, Clumps, Subject and Object, Russian Scandal, the
Minister's Cat, I see a Light, Charades, and acting of all kinds. No
number of picture talks, oral compositions, or observations can compete
in real value with these games, because behind them was a purpose or
need for language that compelled the greatest efforts.
CHAPTER XIX
How then can we secure for him that the new experiences presented to him
in school will be in line with the old? We will take three typical cases
of children to illustrate the real nature of this problem.
Not a mile away we may come to a very respectable suburb of the average
type; and what is said of it may apply in some degree to a provincial
or country town or, at least, the application can easily be made. The
school probably stands at the top corner of a road of houses rented, at
�25 to �35 per annum, with gardens in front and behind. The road
generally runs into a main road with shops and traffic. Here and there
in the residential road are little oases of shops, patronised by the
neighbourhood, and some of the children may live over these. The home
life is more ordinary and needs less descriptive detail, but there are
some features that must be considered. The decencies, not to say
refinements of eating, sleeping and washing are taken for granted: there
is often a bath-room and always a kitchen. The father's occupation may
be local, but a good many fathers will go to town; there is generally a
family holiday to the sea, or less often to the country. In the house
the degree of refinement varies; there are nearly always pictures of a
sort, books of a sort, and the children are supplied with toys of a
sort. They visit each other's houses, and the observances of social life
are kept variously. Often the horizon is very narrow; the mother's
interest is very local and timid; the father's business life may be
absolutely apart from his home life and never mentioned there. The
family conversation while quite amiable and agreeable may be round very
few topics, and the vocabulary, while quite respectable, may be most
limited. Children's questions may be put aside as either trivial or
unsuitable. In one sense the slum child may be said to have a broader
background, the realities of life are bare to him on their most sordid
side, there is neither mystery nor beauty around life, or death, or the
natural affections. The suburban child may on the contrary be balked and
restricted so that unnecessary mystery gives an unwholesome interest to
these things and conventionality a dishonest reserve.
A third case is that of the country child, the child who attends the
village school. Many villages lie several miles from a railway station,
so that the younger children may not see a railway train more than once
or twice a year. The fathers may be engaged in village trades, such as a
shoemaker, carpenter, gardener, general shop merchant, farm labourer, or
farmer. The village houses are often cramped and small, but there is
wholesome space outside, and generally a good garden which supplies some
of the family food; milk and eggs are easily obtainable, and conditions
of living are seldom as crowded as in a town. The country children see
more of life in complete miniature than the slum or the suburban child
can do, for the whole life of the village lies before him. The school
is generally in the centre, with a good playground, and of late years a
good school garden is frequent. The village church, generally old, is
another centre of life, and there is at least the vicarage to give a
type of life under different social conditions.
The home intellectual background may vary, but on the whole cannot be
reckoned on very much; though in some ways it is more narrow than the
suburban one, it is often less superficial. In a different way from the
slum child, but none the less definitely, the country child comes face
to face with the realities of life, in a more natural and desirable way
than either of the others. It is difficult to estimate some of the
effects of living in the midst of real nature on children;
unconsciously, they acquire much deep knowledge impossible to learn
through nature study, however good, a kind of knowledge that is part of
their being; but how far it affects them emotionally or enters into
their scheme of life, is hard to say. As they grow up much of it is
merely economic acquirement: if they are to work on the land, or rear
cattle, or drive a van through the country, it is all to the good; but
one thing is noticeable, that they take very quickly to such allurements
of town life as a cinema, or a picture paper or gramophone, and this
points to unsatisfied cravings of some sort, not necessarily so unworthy
or superficial as the means sought to satisfy them.
From these rather extreme cases we get near the solution of the problem;
it is quite evident that each of these children brings to school very
different contributions of experience on which to build, though their
general needs and interests are similar. Therefore the curriculum of the
school will depend on the general surroundings and circumstances of the
children, and all programmes of work and many questions of organisation
will be built on this. The model programme so dear to some teachers must
be banished, as a doctor would banish a general prescription; no honest
teacher can allow this part of her work to be done for her by any one
else.
Their curriculum is life as the teacher has spread it out before them;
there are no subjects at this stage; the various aspects ought to be of
the nature of a glorious feast to these young children. Traherne says in
the seventeenth century:--
"Will you see the infancy of this sublime and celestial greatness? Those
pure and virgin apprehensions I had in my infancy, and that divine light
wherewith I was born, are the best unto this day wherein I can see the
Universe.... Verily they form the greatest gift His wisdom can bestow,
for without them all other gifts had been dead and vain. They are
unattainable by books and therefore will I teach them by experience....
Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions
of the world than I when I was a child.
"The corn was orient and immortal wheat which never should be reaped,
nor was ever sown. I thought it stood from everlasting to everlasting.
The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold: the gates
were at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them
first through one of the gates transported and ravished me: ... the
skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars, and all the
world was mine: and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it.... So that
with much ado I was corrupted and made to learn the dirty devices of
this world, which I now unlearn, and become, as it were, a little child
again that I may enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."
If this is what life means to the young child, and Traherne only records
what many of us have forgotten there is little need for interference: we
can only spread the feast and stand aside to watch for opportunities.
Even after the Nursery School period much of the curriculum and subject
matter is in the hands of the children themselves, though the relative
proportions will vary according to the children's experiences. It is
pretty evident to the honest-minded teacher that the subjects are, in
school terms, nature work and elementary science, mathematics,
constructive and expressive work, literature, music, language, physical
exercise and religion. The business of the younger child is with real
things and activity, not with symbols and passivity, therefore he is not
really in need of reading, writing, or arithmetic. We hear arguments
from ambitious teachers that children are fond of reading lessons
because they enjoy the fantasies in which these lessons are wrapped, or
the efforts made by the teacher to create interest; we hear that
children ask to be taught to read; they also ask to be taught to drive a
tram or to cook a dinner; but it is all part of the pretence game of
playing at being grown up. They do not need to read while stories and
poetry can be told or read to them; they are not ready to make the
effort of working for a remote economic end, where there is no real
pleasure in the activity, and no opportunity of putting their powers to
use. No child under six wants to sit down and read, and it would be very
harmful if he did; his business is with real things and with his
vocabulary, which is not nearly ready to put into symbols yet. If
reading is delayed, hours of weary drudgery will be saved and energy
stored for more precious attainments.
It is very much easier to give the general curriculum than to deal with
the choice of actual material, because that is involved largely with the
principle of the unity of experience, and, as we know, experiences vary.
The normal town and country child, and the abnormal child of poverty
have all certain human cravings in common, and these are provided for in
the aspects of life or subjects that have been named--but this is far
too general an application to be the end of the matter; each subject has
many sides to offer. There may be for example the pottery town, the
weaving town, the country town, the fishing town, the colliery town: in
the country there is the district of the dairy farmer, of the sheep
farmer, of the grain grower and miller, of the fruit farmer, of the hop
grower, and many districts may partake of more than one characteristic.
Perhaps the most curious anomaly of experience is that of the child of
the London slums who goes "hopping" into some of the loveliest parts of
Kent, in early autumn. And so in a general way at least the concentrated
experience of school must fill gaps and supply experiences that life has
not provided for.
CHAPTER XX
The principle of Freedom underlies all the activities of the school and
does not refer to conduct simply; intellectual and emotional aspects of
discipline are too often ignored and we have as a product the
commonplace, narrow, imitative person, too timid or too indolent to
think a new thought, or to feel strongly enough to stand for a cause.
Self-control is the goal of discipline, but independent thinking,
enthusiasm and initiative are all included in the term.
When the time for sleeping came in the afternoon many of the children
refused to lie down: some consented but only to sing and talk as they
lay. Only one, a child of 2-1/2, slept, because he cried himself to
sleep from sheer strangeness. This apparently unbeautiful picture is
only the first battle of the individual on his entrance to the life of
the community.
On the other hand, there were intervals of keen joy: water, sand and
clay chiefly absorbed the younger children: the older ones wanted to
wash up and scrub, and many spent a good deal of time looking at
picture-books. This was the raw material for the teacher to begin with:
the children came from comfortable suburban homes: none were really
poor, and many had known no privation. They were keen for experiences
and disposed to be very friendly to her.
* * * * *
The idea of class teaching must be postponed, for out of it come most of
the difficulties of discipline, and it is not the natural arrangement at
this transitional period. A teacher is imposing on a number of very
different individuals a system that says their difficulties are alike,
that they must all work at one rate and in one way: and so we have the
weary "reading round" class, when the slow ones struggle and the quick
ones find other and unlawful occupation: we have the number lessons
broken by the teacher's breathless attempts to see that all the class
follows: we have the handwork that imposes an average standard of work
that fits nobody exactly. Intellectual freedom can only come by
individual or group work, while class teaching is only for such
occasions as a literature or a singing lesson, or the presentation of an
occasional new idea in number. Individual and group work need much
organisation, but while classes consist of over forty children there is
no other way to permit intellectual and moral freedom. Of course the
furniture of the room will greatly help to make this more possible, and
it is hoped that an enlightened authority will not continue to supply
heavy iron-framed desks for the junior school, those described as "desks
for listening."
"Where 'thou shalt' of the law becomes 'I will' of the doer, then we are
free."
CHAPTER XXI
Now ideals are supposed to be the essence of morality and morality comes
to us through experience, and only experience tests its truth. The
story with a moral is generally neither literature nor morality, except
such unique examples as _The Pilgrim's Progress _or _Everyman_. The kind
of experience with which morality is concerned is experience of human
life in various circumstances, and the way people behave under those
circumstances. The beginning of such experience is our own behaviour and
the behaviour of other people we know, but this is too limited an
experience to produce a satisfactory ideal; so we crave for something
wider. It is curious how strong is the craving for this kind of
experience in all normal children, in whom one would suppose sense
experiences and especially muscular experiences to be enough. The need
to know about people other than ourselves, and yet not too unlike, in
circumstances other than our own, and yet not too strange, seems to be a
necessary part of our education, and we interpret it in the light of our
own personal conduct. Out of this, as well as out of our direct
experience, we build our ideal. When one realises how an ideal may
colour the whole outlook of a person, one begins to realise what
literature means to a child. The early ideal is crude; it may be Jack
the Giant-Killer, or an engine-driver, Cinderella, or the step-cleaner;
this may grow into Hiawatha or Robinson Crusoe, for boys, and a fairy
tale Princess or one of the "Little Women" for girls. In every hero a
child half-unconsciously sees himself, and the ideal stimulates all that
hidden life which is probably the most important part of his growth. As
indirect experiences grow, or in other words as he hears or reads more
stories, his ideal widens, and his knowledge of the problems of life is
enlarged. This is the raw material of morality, for out of his answers
to these problems he builds up standards of conduct and of judgement. He
projects himself into his own ideal, and he projects himself into the
experiences of other people: he lives in both: this is imagination of
the highest kind, it is often called sympathy, but the term is too
limited, it is rather imaginative understanding.
They are curious about birth and death and all origins: thunder is
terrifying, the sea is enthralling, the wind is mysterious, the sky is
immense, and all suggest a power beyond: in this the children are
reproducing the race experience as expressed in myths, when power was
embodied in a god or goddess. Therefore the fairy world or the giant
world, or the wood full of dwarfs and witches' houses, is as real to
them, and as acceptable, as any part of life. It is their recognition of
a world of spirits which later on mingles itself with the spiritual life
of religion. That life is behind all matter, is the main truth they
hold, and while it is difficult here to disentangle morality from
religion, it is supremely evident that a very great and significant side
of a child's education is before us.
Much that has been said about the method and aim of stories might apply
to those taken from the Bible, but they need certain additional
considerations. Here religion and morality come very closely together:
the recognition of a definite personality behind all circumstances of
life, to whom our conduct matters, gives a soul to morality. The Old
Testament is a record of the growth of a nation more fully conscious of
God than is the record of any other nation, and because of this children
can understand God in human life when they read such stories as the
childhood of Moses and of Samuel. Children resemble the young Jewish
nation in this respect: they accept the direct intervention of God in
the life of every day. Their primitive sense of justice, which is an eye
for an eye, will make them welcome joyfully the plagues of Egypt and the
crossing of the Red Sea. It would be premature to force on them the more
mature idea of mercy, which would probably lead to confusion of
judgement: they must be clear about the balance of things before they
readjust it for themselves.
Much of the material in the Old Testament is hardly suitable for very
young children, but the most should be made of what there is: the lives
of Eastern people are interesting to children and help to make the
phraseology of the Psalms and even of the narratives clear to them.
Wonder stories such as the Creation, the Flood, the Burning Bush,
Elijah's experiences, appeal to them on another side, the side that is
eager to wonder: the accounts of the childhood of Ishmael, Isaac,
Joseph, Moses, David and Samuel, and the little Syrian maid, come very
close to them. Such stories should be given to young children so that
they form part of the enchanted memory of childhood--which is permanent.
With the New Testament the problem is more difficult: one hesitates to
bring the life of Christ before children until they are ready to
understand, even in some degree, its significance; the subject is apt to
be dealt with either too familiarly, and made too commonplace and
everyday a matter, or as something so far removed from human affairs as
to be mysterious and remote to a child. To mix Old and New Testament
indiscriminately, as, for example, by taking them on alternate days, is
unforgivable, and no teacher who has studied the Bible seriously could
do so, if she cared about the religious training of her children, and
understood the Bible.
Without doubt, the only aim in giving poetry to children is to help them
to appreciate it, and the only method to secure this is to read it to
them appreciatively and often.
CHAPTER XXII
The first experiences the child gains from the world of nature are those
of beauty, of sound, colour and smell. Flowers at first are just lovely
and sweet-smelling; the keen senses of a child are more deeply satisfied
with colour and scent than we have any idea of, unless some faint memory
of what it meant remains with us. But he begins to grasp real scientific
truth from his experiences with the elements which have for him such a
mysterious attraction; by the very contact with water something in the
child responds to its stimulus. Mud and sand have their charms, quite
intangible, but universal, from prince to coster; a bonfire is something
that arouses a kind of primeval joy. Again, race experience reproducing
itself may account for all this, and it must be satisfied. The demand
for contact with the rest of nature is a strong and fierce part of human
nature, and it means the growth of something in life that we cannot do
without. We induce children to come into our schools when this hunger is
at its fiercest, and very often we do nothing to satisfy it, but set
them in rooms to look at things inanimate when their very being is
crying out for life. "I want something and I don't know what to want" is
the expression of a state very frequent in children, and not infrequent
in grown-up people, because they have been balked of something.
How, then, can we provide for their experience of this side of life? We
have tried to do so in the past by object and nature lessons, but we
must admit that they are not the means by which young children seek to
know life, or by which they appreciate its beauty. We have been trying
to kill too many birds with one stone in our economic way; "to train the
powers of observation," "to teach a child to express himself," "to help
a child to gain useful knowledge about living things," have been the
most usual aims. And the method has been that of minute examination of a
specimen from the plant or animal world, utterly detached from its
surroundings, considered by the docile child in parts, such as leaves,
stem, roots, petals, and uses; or head, wings, legs, tail, and habits.
The innocent listener might frequently think with reason that a number
lesson rather than a nature lesson was being given. The day of the
object lesson is past, and to young children the nature lesson must
become nature work.
It is in the term "nature lesson" that the root of the mischief lies:
nature is not a lesson to the young child, it is an interest from which
he seeks to gain more pleasure, by means of his own activity: plants
encourage him to garden, animals stir his desire to watch, feed and
protect; water, earth and fire arouse his craving to investigate and
experiment: there is no motive for passive study at this juncture, and
without a motive or purpose all study leads to nothing. Adults compare,
and count the various parts of a living thing for purposes of
classification connected with the subdivisions of life which we call
botany and zoology; but such things are far removed from the young
child's world--only gradually does it begin to dawn on him that there
are interesting likenesses, and that in this world, as in his own, there
are relationships; when he realises this, the time for a nature lesson
has come. But much direct experience must come first.
In setting out the furnishing of the school the need for this activity
is implied. No school worthy of the name can do without a garden, any
more than it can do without reading books, or blackboards, indeed the
former need is greater: if it is possible, and possibilities gradually
merge into acceptances, a pond should be in the middle of the garden,
and trees should also be considered as part of the whole. It is not
difficult for the ordinary person to make a pond, or even to begin a
garden.
Inside the school where plants and flowers in pots are numerous, a part
of the morning should be spent in the care of these: few people know how
to arrange flowers, and fewer how to feed and wash them; if there are an
aquarium or chrysalis boxes, they have to be attended to: all this
should be a regular duty with a strong sense of responsibility attached
to it; it is curious how many people are content to live in an
atmosphere of decaying matter.
If the children enjoy so intensely the colour of the leaves and flowers
they will be glad to have the opportunity of painting them; this is as
much a part of nature work as any other, and it should be used as such,
because it emphasises so strongly the side of appreciation of beauty, a
side very often neglected. It is here that the individual paint box is
so important. If children are to have any sense of colour they must
learn to match very truthfully; there is a great difference between the
blue of the forget-me-not and of the bluebell, but only by experiment
can children discover that the difference lies in the amount of red in
the latter. By means of discoveries of this kind they will see new
colours in life around them, and a new depth of meaning will come to
their everyday observations. This is true observation, not the "look and
say" of the oral lesson, which has no purpose in it, and leads to no
natural activity, or to appreciation.
As children get older, and have the power to look back, they will feel
the necessity of keeping records; and thus the Nature Calendar,
forerunner of geography, will be adopted naturally.
Thus we come to the conclusion that the Nursery School nature work can
be safely left to look after itself, provided the surroundings are
satisfying and the children are free.
CHAPTER XXIII
For instance, he might set down the points of a game by strokes, each
line representing a different opponent:
John ||||||||||||||||
Henry |||||||||||
Tom |||
After doing this a good many times he could be told that this is a
universal method, and he would doubtless enjoy the purely puzzle
pleasure in working long sums to perfect practice. This pleasure is very
common in children at this stage, but too often it comes to them merely
through being shown the "trick" of carrying tens. They have reached a
purely abstract point, but they cannot get through it without some more
material help. The following is an example of the kind of help that can
be given in getting clear the concept of the ten grouping and the
processes it involves:
Sums of two or three lines can thus be set out on the horizontal bars,
and in processes of addition the answer can be on the bottom line. It is
very easy, by this concrete means, to see the process in subtraction,
and indeed the whole difficulty of dealing with ten is made concrete.
The whole of a sum can be gone through on this board with the
button-moulds, and on boards and chalk with figures, side by side, thus
interpreting symbol by material; but the whole process is abstract.
The piece of apparatus is less abstract only in degree than the figures
on the blackboard, because neither represents real life or its problems:
in abstract working we are merely going off at a side issue for the sake
of practice, to make us more competent to deal with the economic affairs
of life. There is a place for sticks and counters, and there is a place
for money and measures, but they are not the same: the former represents
the abstract and the latter the concrete problem if used as in real
life: the bridge between the abstract and the concrete is largely the
work of the transition class and junior school, in respect of the
foundations of arithmetic known as the first four rules.
CHAPTER XXIV
This idea has often been only half digested, and consequently it has led
to a very trivial kind of application; a nature lesson of the "look and
say" description has been followed by a painting lesson; a geography
lesson, by the making of a model. If the method of learning by doing was
the accepted aim of the teacher then it was not carried out, for this is
learning and then doing, not learning for the purpose of doing, but
doing for the purpose of testing the learning, which is quite another
matter, and not a very natural procedure with young children. Many
people have tried to make things from printed directions, a woman may
try to make a blouse and a man to make a knife-box; their procedure is
not to separate the doing and the learning process; probably they have
first tried to do, found need for help, and gone to the printed
directions, which they followed side by side with the doing; and in the
light of former failures or in the course of looking or of
experimenting, they stumbled upon knowledge: this is learning by doing.
But handwork has its own absolute place as well. A child wants to
acquire skill in this direction even more consciously than he wants to
learn: if he has been free, in the nursery class, to experiment with
materials, and if he knows some of his limitations, he is now, in the
transition class, ready for help, and he should get it as he needs it.
This may run side by side with the more didactic side of handwork which
has been described, but it is more likely that in practice the two are
inextricably mixed up; and this does not matter if the two ends are
clear in the teacher's mind; both sides have to be reckoned with.
The important thing to know is the kind of help that should be given,
and when and how it is needed. It is well to remember that in this
connection a child's limitations are not final, but only mark stages:
for example, in his early attempts to use thick cardboard he cannot
discover the neat hinge that is made by the process known as a
"half-cut"; he tries in vain to bend the cardboard, so as to secure the
same result. There are two ways of helping him: either he can be quite
definitely shown and made to imitate, or he can be set to think about
it; he is given a cardboard knife and allowed to experiment: if he
fails, it may be suggested that a clean edge can only be got by some
form of cutting; probably he will find out the rest of the process. The
second method is the better one, because it promotes thinking, while the
first only promotes pure imitation and the habit of reckoning on this
easy solution of difficulties. A dull child may have to be shown, but
there are few such children, unless they have been trained to dulness.
One of the lessons of the war is economy. In handwork this has come to
us through the quest for materials, but it has been a blessing, if now
and then in disguise. In the more formal period of handwork only
prepared, almost patented material was used; everything was
"requisitioned" and eager manufacturers supplied very highly finished
stuff. Not very many years ago, the keeper of a "Kindergarten" stall at
an exhibition said, while pointing to cards cut and printed with
outlines for sewing and pricking, "We have so many orders for these that
we can afford to lay down considerable plant for their production." An
example in another direction is that of a little girl who attended one
of the best so-called Kindergartens of the time: she was afflicted,
while at home, with the "don't know what to do" malady; her mother
suggested that she might make some of the things she made at school, but
she negatived that at once with the remark, "I couldn't do that, you
see, because we have none of the right kind of stuff to make them of
here."
CHAPTER XXV
This aspect of experience comes in two forms, the life of man in the
past, with the memorials and legacies he has left, and the life of man
in the present under the varying conditions of climate and all that it
involves. In other words these experiences are commonly known as history
and geography, though in the earlier stages of their appearance in
school it is perhaps better to call the work--preparation for history
and geography. They would naturally appear in the transition or the
junior class, preferably in the latter, but they need not be wholly new
subjects to a child; his literature has prepared him for both; to some
extent his experiments in handwork have prepared him for history, while
his nature work, especially his excursions and records, have prepared
him for geography. That he needs this extension of experience can be
seen in his growing demands for true stories, true in the more literal
sense which he is coming fast to appreciate; undoubtedly most children
pass through a stage of extreme literalism between early childhood and
what is generally recognised as boyhood and girlhood. They begin to ask
questions regarding the past, they are interested in things from
"abroad," however vague that term may be to them.
This working outwards from actual experiences, from the home country to
the foreign, from actual contact with real things to things of
travellers' tales, is the only way to bring geography to the very door
of the school, to make it part of the actual life.
There are certain cravings, interests and needs, common to all children,
which come regardless of surroundings. All children want to know certain
things about people who lived before them, not so much their great
doings as their smaller ones; they want to know what these people were
like, what they worked at, and learnt, how they travelled, what they
bought and sold: and there is undoubtedly a primitive strain in all
children that comes out in their love of building shelters, playing at
savages, and making things out of natural material. One of the most
intense moments in _Peter Pan_ to many children is the building of the
little house in the wood, and later on, of the other on the top of the
trees: that is the little house of their dreams. They are not interested
in constitutions or the making of laws; wars and invasions have much the
same kind of interest for them as the adventures of Una and the Red
Cross Knight.
How are these cravings usually satisfied in the early stages of history
teaching of to-day? As a rule a series of biographies of notable people
is given, regardless of chronology, or the children's previous
experiences, and equally careless of the history lessons of the future;
Joan of Arc, Alfred and the Cakes, Gordon of Khartoum, Boadicea,
Christopher Columbus, Julius Caesar, form a list which is not at all
uncommon; there is no leading thread, no developing idea, and the old
test, "the children like it," excuses indolent thinking. On the other
hand, the desire to know more of the Robinson Crusoe mode of life has
been apparent to many teachers for some time, but the material at their
disposal has been scanty and uncertain. It is to Prof. Dewey that we owe
the right organisation of this part of history. He has shown that it is
on the side of industry, the early modes of weaving, cooking, lighting
and heating, making implements for war and for hunting, and making of
shelters, that prehistoric man has a real contribution to give: but for
the beginnings of social life, for realisation of such imperishable
virtues as courage, patriotism and self-sacrifice, children must go to
the lives of real people and gradually acquire the idea that certain
things are, so to speak, from "everlasting to everlasting," while others
change with changing and growing circumstances.
The geography syllabus, even more than the history one, depends for its
beginnings at least on the surroundings of the school--out of the mass
of possible materials a very rich and comprehensive syllabus can be
made, beginning with any one of the central points already suggested.
Above all there should be plenty of pictures, not as amplification, but
as material, by means of which a child may interpret more fully; a
picture should be of the nature of a problem or of a map--and picture
reading should be in the junior school what map reading is in the upper
school.
GEOGRAPHY
It grows out of the shops of the neighbourhood and the adjoining railway
system.
_Home-produced Goods_--
_Foreign Goods_--
[The need for a map will come early in the first part of the course, and
the need for a globe in the second.]
HISTORY
This grows naturally out of the geography syllabus and might be taken
side by side or afterwards.
CHAPTER XXVI
Reading and writing are held to have lifted man above the brute; they
are the means by which we can discover and record human experience and
progress, and as such their value is incalculable. But in themselves
they are artificial conventions, symbols invented for the convenience of
mankind, and to acquire them we need exercise no great mental power. A
good eye and ear memory, and a certain superficial quickness to
recognise and apply previous knowledge, is all that is needed for
reading and spelling; while for writing, the development of a
specialised muscular skill is all that is necessary. In themselves they
do not as a rule hold any great interest for a child: sometimes they
have the same puzzle interest as a long addition sum, and to children of
a certain type, mechanical work such as writing gives relief; one of the
most docile and uninteresting of little boys said that writing was his
favourite subject, and it was easy to understand: he did not want to be
stirred out of his commonplaceness; unconsciously he had assimilated the
atmosphere and adopted the standards of his surroundings, which were
monotonous and commonplace in the extreme, and so he desired no more
adventurous method of expression than the process of writing, which he
could do well. Imitation is often a strong incentive to reading, it is
part of the craving for grown-upness to many children; they desire to
do what their brothers and sisters can do. But _during the first stage
of childhood, roughly up to the age of six or even later, no child needs
to learn to read or write, taking "need" in the psychological sense:_
that period is concerned with laying the foundation of real things and
with learning surroundings;--any records of experience that come to a
child can come as they did to his earliest forefathers--by word of
mouth. When he wants to read stories for himself, or write his own
letters, then he is impelled by a sufficiently strong aim or incentive
to make concentration possible, without resorting to any of the
fantastic devices and apparatus so dear to so many teachers. Indeed it
is safe to say of many of these devices that they prove the fact that
children are not ready for reading.
When a child is ready to read and write the process need not be a long
one: by wise delay many tedious hours are saved, tedious to both teacher
and children; they have already learnt to talk in those precious hours,
to discriminate sounds as part of language training, but without any
resort to symbols--merely as something natural. It has been amply proved
that if a child is not prematurely forced into reading he can do as much
in one year as he would have done in three, under more strained
conditions.
With regard to methods a great deal has been written on the subject; it
is pretty safe to leave a teacher to choose her own--for much of the
elaboration is unnecessary if reading is rightly delayed, and if a child
can read reasonably well at seven and a half there can be no grounds for
complaint. If his phonetic training has been good in the earlier stages
of language, then this may be combined with the "look and say" method,
or method of reading by whole words. The "cat on the mat" type of book
is disappearing, and its place is being taken by books where the subject
matter is interesting and suitable to the child's age; but as in other
subjects the book chosen should be considered in reference to the
child's surroundings, either to amplify or to extend.
Writing is, in the first instance, a part of reading: when words are
being learnt they must be written, or in the earliest stages printed,
but only those interesting to the children and written for some definite
purpose should be selected: a great aid to spelling is transcription,
and children are always willing to copy something they like, such as a
verse of poetry, or their name and address. As in arithmetic and in
handwork, they will come to recognise the need for practice, and be
willing to undergo such exercise for the sake of improvement, as well as
for the pleasure in the activity--which actual writing gives to some
children.
We must be quite clear about relative values. Reading and writing are
necessities, and the means of opening up to us things of great value;
but the art of acquiring them is of little intrinsic value, and the
recognition of the need is not an early one; nothing is gained by
beginning too early, and much valuable time is taken from other
activities, notably language. The incentive should be the need that the
child feels, and when this is evident time and pains should be given to
the subject so that it maybe quickly acquired. But the art of reading is
no test of intelligence, and the art of writing is no test of original
skill. _The claims of the upper departments must be resisted._
CHAPTER XXVII
The _fourth_ thing that matters is the making of good and serviceable
habits: much has been said on this, in connection with the nursery
class, and it is at that stage that the process is most important, but
it should never cease. If a child is to have time and opportunity to
develop his individuality he must not be hampered by having to be
conscious of things that belong to the subconscious region. To start a
child with a foundation of good habits is better than riches.
The _sixth_ thing, that matters is the cultivation of the divine gift of
imagination; both morality and spirituality spring from this; meanness,
cowardice, lack of sympathy, sensuality, materialism, quickly grow where
there is no imagination. It refines and intensifies personality, it
opens a door to things beyond the senses. It makes possible appreciation
of the things of the spirit, and appreciation is a thousand times more
important than knowledge.
The _last_ thing that matters is the need for freedom from bondage, of
the body and of the soul. Only from a free atmosphere can come the best
things--personality, imagination and opportunity; and all are great
needs, but the greatest of all is freedom.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
"Baby Camp",
Barnard, Dr. H.,
Barnes, Prof. Earl,
Beauty,
conduct, appreciation of beauty in,
_See also_ Colour, Rhythm, etc.
Beer, Miss H., notes of,
Beresford's _Housemates_, description of a suburb,
Bergson,
Bermondsey Settlement Free Kindergarten,
Biological view of education,
Birchenough,
Bird, Mr., and his family,
Birmingham Kindergartens,
Bishop, Miss Caroline,
Blankenberg Kindergarten,
Blow, Miss,
Bradford Joint Conference,
Brock, Mr. Clutton, quotations, etc.,
Brooke, Stopford,
Brown, Frances, _Grannie's Wonderful Chair_,
Browning,
Brown's _Young Artists' Headers_,
Buckton, Miss,
Buildings. _See_ Equipment and Surroundings
Caldecott Nursery School,
Camp School,
Child study,
Class discipline,
Cleanliness and order,
Clough, A.H.,
Clouston, Dr.,
Colour,
Comenius,
Conduct--
aim of education,
experiences of--_See also_ Moral Teaching
Connectedness, continuity. _See_ Unity
Constructive play,
varieties of _making_--_See also_ Handwork
Cook, Mr. Caldwell, _The Play Way_, etc.,
Cooke, Mr. E.,
Cooking,
Co-operation in play,
Correlation,
Infant School programme in Transition period,
present-day Infant Schools,
Country child,
Country life for the child,
Crane, Walter,
Creation. _See_ Constructive Play
Cr�che. _See_ Nursery School
Curriculum--
principle guiding selection,
transition class,
Ebers,
Edinburgh, Free Kindergartens,
Education Act of 1870,
of 1919,
_Education by Life,_
_Education of Man,_
Environment--
school equipment, etc. _See_ Equipment
source of child's experience,
Equipment and surroundings,
miniature world,
Montessori didactic apparatus,
transition classes and Junior School,
Ewing, Mrs., stories of,
Experience, education by means of,
child's desires and needs,
grouping subjects of experience,
material and opportunities,
morality and indirect experiences,
passing on experience,
Fairy tales,
Field, Eugene, verses of,
Findlay, Miss,
Fisher, Mr.,
Fleming, Marjorie,
_Floor Games_,
Flowers and plants, 93, 201. _See also_ Garden, Nature Work
Folsung,
Formalism,
Freedom--
apparent result at first,
definition,
Froebel on,
Montessori, Dr., work of,
vital principle,
warning against interference,
Freud,
Froebel and Froebelian principles--
aim of education,
beauty,
biologist educator and Froebel,
definitions of Kindergarten,
excursions,
impression and expression,
Montessori and Froebelian systems,
society,
Furniture, _See also_ Equipment
Fyleman, Rose, _Chimney sand Fairies,_
Games,
Garden,
activities in a suburban garden,
best use of ground,
possibilities in difficult places,
Geography,
illustrative syllabus,
Glasgow, Phoenix Park Kindergarten,
Glenconner, Lady,
Grant, Miss,
Greenford Avenue School, Hanwell,
Groos,
Keilhau,
Kindergarten Band,
Kindergartens, America,
first English,
Froebelian principles _See_ Froebel,
Germany,
_Kids' Guards_,
London School Board Infant Schools, proposed introduction,
perversion of system in Infant Schools,
Schrader, Henrietta, work of,
Klein, Abb�,
Krause,
Language training,
games for,
Lawrence, Miss Esther,
_Levana_,
Literature _See also_ Stories and Poetry
Lodge, Sir O.,
Paper-folding,
Parents' evenings,
Payne, Miss Janet,
Peabody, Miss,
Periods of a young child's life,
Pestalozzi,
Pestalozzi-Froebel House,
Phillips, Miss K.,
Phonic method of teaching reading,
Physical requirements,
Picture books,
Pictures,
Play--
biologist educator's view,
constructive,
co-operation in,
courage in the teacher,
definitions,
distinction from work,
Froebel's theory of,
practice at Keilhau,
imitative,
material,
Froebel's "Gifts," etc.,
self-expression in,
theories of,
transition class,
_Play Way, The_,
Playground, equipment, etc.,
garden essential,
transition class,
Poetry,
Poor and well-to-do children, different requirements,
Possession, child's need of,
meum and tuum training,
Preparation theory of play,
Priestman, Miss,
Principles, vital principles,
Pugh, Edwin,
Punnett, Miss,
Table manners,
Teacher--
function,
personality question,
religion,
training,
Thornton-le-Dale Kindergarten,
Time-table thraldom,
instance from a teacher's note-book,
Tools,
Touch, sense of,
Toys,
transition classes and Junior School,
Wells, Mr., on,
Traherne,
Transition classes and Junior School,
bridge between freedom and timetable,
curriculum,
discipline,
equipment, etc.,
freedom and class teaching,
handwork,
help, methods of,
imitation,
nature work,
play spirit,
_Ultimate Belief_,
Uniformity in Infant Schools,
Unity of aim and unity in experience,
cases illustrating problem,
previous experience of the child, basing curriculum on,
THE END
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